Road Atlanta: Liz Halliday race report

Halliday enjoys ALMS return despite Petit Le Mans retirement

Liz Halliday's return to her native USA didn't end as she would have hoped after an accident for co-driver Dean Stirling forced an early retirement at the Petit Le Mans race. However, despite that frustration, the California-born dual sportswoman enjoyed her outing with Creation AIM.

With the team's Creation CA07 inside the top ten in the P1 class, Stirling had a big off at turn 1 just over three hours into the race and the resulting damage after hitting the tyre barriers meant he was unable to continue. The #888 car had already had an incident-filled race when Halliday had a small spin after being chopped by a GT2 Ferrari during her stint in the car.

Yet despite that misfortune, Halliday admitted she had enjoyed her return and thanked the team for their hard work.

"It's too bad that we didn't finish, but sometimes these things happen in motor racing," Liz said. "The good news is that Dean is ok. I was lucky in my incident because the Ferrari was about to turn into me and I had to turn sharply to avoid a serious accident, which resulted in a spin, but thankfully I didn't hit anything and we managed to get going again safely with some help from the marshals."

The race started with the #888 Creation in 19th on the grid with Stuart Hall driving a strong opening stint to move the car up the order. Halliday continued that progress before her incident and the team looked set for a strong top-ten finish before Stirling's off.

Liz said: "I haven't raced at Road Atlanta for two years and it is my first time here in a P1 car which was pretty exciting! The car felt really good and we were all quick during the week which is credit to the team who worked hard and did a good job.

"Now we've got to look towards Laguna Seca in two weeks time and focus on getting a good result there."

Liz will now head back to the UK for one night before returing to the saddle for a week at the Boekelo International CCI*** event in Holland with her horse Fox.

-credit: lizhalliday.com