After two disappointing weekends with technical issues, Muscle Milk Pickett Racing bounced back into victory lane at Virginia International Raceway today with Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr taking a crushing victory.

The German duo won with a three lap margin and extended their points gap to 13 prior to the final round of the 2012 American Le Mans Series at Petit Le Mans on October 20.

Now in their third full-time ALMS season, Muscle Milk lost out in close championship battles to Highcroft Racing in 2010 and Dyson Racing last year.

“This was difficult to manage the traffic,” Graf said.

“There were certain places you could just not get around. It also depends on what class you’re overtaking. Overall everybody had some incidents but we saw a really good race.

“I pushed hard but I was conservative with the places in traffic. But these other classes were fighting so hard within themselves they really weren’t going to give you the room. But we came here doing what we wanted to do, we drove hard, we went fast, and the team didn’t make a mistake.”

Today’s victory was the team’s sixth in 2012 armed with the HPD ARX-03a. Today’s win tally brings Luhr to 41 ALMS victories while Graf now has 14 first place trophies to his credit.

“We’ll go back to the shop and regroup. It will be a big team effort. We certainly weren’t happy with the last 2 races, so we just have to improve and get better.

“If you don’t learn every day, and you stand still, you end up going backward. We’ll get some good competition coming in from overseas for Petit, so it should be a good race.”