Testing begins today Jun 25, 2004, at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for Sunday's running of American Le Mans at Mid-Ohio, the second round of the 2004 season for the American Le Mans Series.

ALMS teams will have two hours of testing time on the 2.25-mile, 13-turn Mid-Ohio circuit today beginning at 1 p.m. (Eastern). You can follow the action at www.americanlemans.com.

Twenty-eight American Le Mans Series cars are in the paddock at Mid-Ohio for the event, which will kick off the busiest portion of the 2004 ALMS schedule as the first of five races in seven weeks.

Ten of the racing teams on hand at Mid-Ohio competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France June 12-13 and shipped their cars and equipment to America for the resumption of the ALMS season. Several of the cars arrived at Mid-Ohio still carrying the numbers and decals they wore at Le Mans and race teams spent Wednesday and Thursday bringing them back into their normal ALMS form.

Today's test session will see the first on-track action for the two cars that have attracted a great deal of attention in the Mid-Ohio paddock: the Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT machines of Krohn-Barbour Racing. David Brabham, Peter Kox, Scott Maxwell and Tracy Krohn will take their first laps in the cars today. The racing team took delivery of the two cars this week from builder Reiter Engineering in Germany.

Another new car in action for the first time at Mid-Ohio is the Panoz Esperante GT-LM of the factory Panoz Motor Sports team. Gunnar Jeannette and David Saelens will drive the car, which was built by Elan Motorsport Technologies in Braselton, Ga.


Official practice and qualifying will be held Saturday, along with a driver autograph session and a Fan Forum.

Sunday's race starts at 1 p.m. (Eastern) and will be a timed event of two hours, 45 minutes. CBS Sports will have television coverage in North America from 2-4 p.m. (Eastern) while MotorsTV will have live coverage in Europe beginning at 18:00 (UK time). The broadcast of the American Le Mans Series Radio Web can be heard online at www.americanlemans.com. The Radio Web will also be the soundtrack for the MotorsTV telecast.