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Bio
Timo Bernhard and Penske Racing teammate Romain Dumas had a year that race car drivers dream of in 2007. Not only did the duo win the American Le Mans Series LMP2 championship, finish all 12 races on the podium and claim a class victory eight times, but they also beat the faster LMP1 prototypes to win six ALMS races overall in their No. 7 Penske Porsche RS Spyder. Overall wins came at Long Beach, Houston, Mid-Ohio, Road America, Mosport and Detroit, with class wins also at Petit Le Mans and Laguna Seca.
The supreme season highlighted a rise to the top of the sports car racing world for the racer from Germany.
Bernhard started racing in karts at the age of 10, winning several championships before graduating to the German Formula Ford series in 1998.
After back-to-back standout seasons in the German Porsche Carrera Cup, Bernhard got his first taste of American Le Mans Series competition in 2001 when he finished second at Sebring in an Alex Job Racing Porsche.
He made history the following season when he became youngest driver ever to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Rolex 24 at Daytona in the same year competing for The Racers Group Porsche team. He also claimed his first ALMS win that season taking the checkered flag at Road America with co-driver Jorg Bergmeister for Alex Job Racing.
Bernhard and Bergmeister completed their “internship” in 2003 with Alex Job Racing as the number two driving team for the squad behind GT champions Sascha Maassen and Lucas Luhr. They did so in fine style by winning the Petit Le Mans event in their Porsche after suffering contact early in the race.
Also in 2003, Bernhard took advantage of a Luhr spin late in the Chevy Grand Prix of Atlanta in June to give the team its second ALMS win.
The break-out year came in 2004 for Bernhard, who captured the American Le Mans Series GT class championship in his Alex Job Racing Porsche, winning six races, including the 12 Hours of Sebring with Maassen. Besides Sebring, Bernhard and Bergmeister won at Mosport, Road America, Infineon Raceway, Petit LeMans (with Bergmeister and Maassen) and Laguna Seca.
In 2005, Bernhard teamed with the Frenchman Dumas and, despite the fact that they won four ALMS races in a row (Mid-Ohio, Lime Rock, Sears Point and Portland) in the middle of the season in their Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, they could not recover from a DNF at Sebring and bad luck at several other events. They ended up second in the ALMS GT2 point standings.
In 2006, Bernhard joined Penske Racing to compete in the Porsche RS Spyder. He and Dumas overcame a pole disqualification at Mid-Ohio to earn the team’s first ALMS overall win. They had previously led the LMP2 class at both Sebring and Houston before mechanical failures caused DNFs. Bernhard and Dumas then won LMP2 at Lime Rock before Porsche and Penske split the driving squad in order to maximize the chances for a driver title. It was then Bernhard and Sascha Maassen who won at Road America and Petit Le Mans, securing the driving co-championships for Maassen and Luhr.
That set the stage for the storybook 2007 season when Bernhard and Dumas re-wrote the series record books with the second straight LMP2 title for Penske Racing.
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