The biggest race of the season at Road Atlanta runs on Saturday with the 12th annual Petit Le Mans. The Petit Le Mans is the ninth of 10 races on the season for the American Le Mans series. The final race of the season is the Monterey Sports Car Championships on Oct. 11 in Monterey, Calif.
The Petit Le Mans is a 10-hour/1,000-mile endurance race, fashioned after the 24-Hours of Le Mans race in France.
Winners in the LMP (Le Mans Prototype)-1, LMP2, GT1 and GT2 classes will be crowned at the Petit Le Mans. Flowery Branch’s Johnny O’Connell is looking to defend his title in GT1. Last year, he won driving the No. 3 Corvette C6R with teammates Ron Fellows and Jan Magnussen.
Allan McNish, Rinaldo Capello and Emanuele Pirro drove their Audi car to victory last season in the LMP1. Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe drove the Porsche to victory in the LMP2 in 2008.
The No. 62 Ferrari driven by Jaime Meo and Mika Salo won last year’s GT2 class at Petit Le Mans.
College football
This week, the Georgia Bulldogs take a break from the SEC schedule to face PAC 10 opponent Arizona State at 7 p.m. Saturday night in Athens. Last year, the Bulldogs defeated the Sun Devils 27-10 in Tempe, Ariz.
Georgia Tech plays host to North Carolina at noon on Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium. Following consecutive Thursday night games, this is the Yellow Jackets’ (2-1, 1-1 ACC) first Saturday game since a season-opening win against Jacksonville State in Atlanta.
Cross country
The Hall County championships will be run on Thursday at Chestatee Middle School. The varsity girls race will start at 5 p.m., followed by the varsity boys at 5:30 p.m. North Hall’s Ty McCormack is considered the favorite to win this race after posting wins this year at the West Hall Invitational, Berry Invitational and Northeast Georgia Championships.
His best time this season is a 15 minute, 59 second, which was posted last week at the West Hall meet.
Last year, then North Hall senior Nolan Clark set a new record at Hall County (17:16), breaking the previous record by 24 seconds. This is widely considered one of the most difficult courses for a meet all season.
High school football
This is a big week in high school football with Region 7-AAA schools finally ready to open subregion play on Friday. The six subregion games for schools in the North subregion and five subregion games for schools in the South subregion will be the determining factor for playoff qualifying at season’s end.
In Region 7B-AAA, Johnson plays host to Flowery Branch, Gainesville visits West Hall, East Hall visits West Forsyth. In Region 7A-AAA, North Hall visits Creekview, Chestatee plays host to Pickens, and Lumpkin County visits Gilmer. White County has a bye this week.
In Region 8-AA, Banks County visits North Oconee, Jefferson plays host to Union County, and Riverside Military visits East Jackson. In Region 8-AAAA, Habersham Central visits Winder-Barrow.