The 14th annual Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda was a classic 1,000-mile endurance thriller and a more-than-worthy finale for the 2011 American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón. Peugeot Sport Total won its third straight Petit Le Mans after an intense battle with Audi Sport Team Joest as Franck Montagny, Stephane Sarrazin and Alexander Wurz drove to victory.

AF Corse held off Flying Lizard Motorsports and BMW Motorsports for the GTE-Pro win at Road Atlanta in what served as the penultimate round of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. Tim Pappas and Black Swan Racing successfully defended their GT Challenge driver and team championships while Eric Lux, Gunnar Jeannette and Ricardo Gonzalez had a three-way tie for the LMP Challenge driver`s championship. CORE autosport earned its first LMPC team championship.

With the No. 2 Audi of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Dindo Capello also experiencing mechanical woes, it was up to the No. 1 Audi R18 of Fässler, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas to chase down Montagny, Sarrazin and Wurz in the No. 8 Peugeot 908.

"We all knew it would be a difficult race with the pressure between the four cars and the Oreca (Peugeot)," Wurz said. "We knew the traffic would be a lot to deal with. I didn`t think all four cars would be able to see the end. We took care of the car and the car was really good in traffic. We knew we could win if we did not make any mistakes."

An intense battle for the lead between Dumas and Montagny ended with three hours to go when the two touched at the entry to the long backstraight. The contact sent the Audi into the wall at Turn 8. From there it was clear sailing to the checkered flag for Peugeot.

"I was most of the time faster than the Audi so it was easy to pull away," Montagny said. "But we had a long yellow period. Then I got in traffic and Romain caught up to me. He tried to overtake me but I closed the door (at Turn 10). But later I opened my line to get around a GTC Porsche, and I took my line back into the left-hand corner. Romain took a jump into the hole that was only open for the Porsche. I was really sorry to have a fight like this and finish. We`d like to battle on the track. But we had a great race and had a good car."

As expected, the LMP1 race began as a dogfight between Peugeot Sport Total and Audi Sport Team Joest. Marcel Fassler in the No. 1 Audi R18 took the lead briefly from the pole-winning No. 7 Peugeot 908 of Sebastien Bourdais, but Bourdais retook the race lead shortly before the first full-course yellow. The No. 7 Peugeot`s bid for a Petit Le Mans win didn`t go much farther, as the car lost drive and came to a halt early in the race`s second hour. The team brought the car behind the wall for repairs but retired shortly thereafter.