Race of a Thousand Years

Like the 1999 Le Mans Fuji 1000 km, the Race of a Thousand Years was intended as a precursor to a planned Asia-Pacific Le Mans Series (APLMS) run by Don Panoz and the Professional Sports Car Racing body, just as the Silverstone and Nürburgring events earlier in the season were for the European Le Mans Series (ELMS). After a small number of entrants for the European series in 2001, as well as a lack of entrants for a third Asian-Pacific exhibition event at the Sepang Circuit, the APLMS plans were cancelled. The race was the final of twelve endurance sports car racing rounds of the 2000 American Le Mans Series and took place at the Adelaide Street Circuit on 31 December 2000. The event was the first in a nine-year contract, but was abandoned after only one. Over 135,000 fans attended the race meeting, with almost 70,000 of them in attendance on race day, though race organisers had hoped for around 200,000 people in attendance during the race weekend. ==Race Summary==

By completing the first 25 laps (and in the lead after having passed teammate Frank Biela on lap 17), Allan McNish became the 2000 American Le Mans Series LMP Drivers' Champion. McNish and teammate Rinaldo Capello completed 225 laps in their Audi Sport North America R8. Australian driver Brad Jones had also qualified the R8, and was on hand to help with the driver changes, but did not drive in the race. Jones, the team owner and lead driver of Audi's factory backed Super Touring race team in Australia, was on stand-by for Scotsman McNish who had injured his back a few days before the race while stepping out of his kilt after a photo shoot and had spent the day before the race flat on his back in bed in a successful effort to be fit to race. Only being a guest driver who'd never even driven the car until practice, Jones later admitted that despite arguably knowing the circuit better than anyone in the entire Audi team, his lap times were around 4 seconds slower per lap than both McNish and Capello so while it was disappointing, it was probably a good thing he didn't get to drive (part of the Brad's problem was that being taller and stockier than his would-be co-drivers, he actually struggled to fit in the R8). The Audi team suffered a setback on the morning of the race when Capello crashed the R8 (painted in crocodile livery in honour of the host country Australia) into the tyre barriers on the outside of turn six. However, despite not being able to recover all of the parts as some of them (including some of the body panels with the special crocodile paintwork) had actually been souvenired by some enterprising spectators, the team were able to repair the car well in time to allow McNish to take the start. The GTS class was won by Olivier Beretta, Karl Wendlinger and Dominique Dupuy who piloted their Team Oreca Dodge Viper GTS-R (known as a Chrysler Viper in Australia) to 3rd outright, while finishing 5th outright were the GT class winners Dirk Müller and Lucas Luhr in their Dick Barbour Racing Porsche 911 GT3-R. McNish (Audi), Portuguese driver Ni Amorim (Viper) and German Luhr (Porsche) set the fastest laps in their respective classes, with McNish's time of 1:25.2189 being the fastest ever non-Formula One race lap of the Adelaide circuit (compared to the outright lap record of 1:15.381 set by Damon Hill in a Williams FW15C powered by a Renault V10 engine during the 1993 Australian Grand Prix). / Allan McNish crocodile liveried Audi R8 driven early in the race by McNish. ==Top 10 Qualifiers==

Class winners in bold. † – No. 2 Panoz was disqualified for allowing an unassigned driver, Klaus Graf, to drive the car during the race. ==Statistics==

• Pole Position – Rinaldo Capello – No. 77 Audi Sport North America – 1:23.804 • Fastest Lap – Allan McNish – No. 77 Audi Sport North America – 1:25.219 • Average Speed – 148.048 km/h ==References==