Butch Leitzinger is another star driver in the American Le Mans Series who has been part of the championship since the very beginning.

While he is about to make his 100th ALMS start this weekend, he finished second in the first ever ALMS race at Sebring in 1999 for Dyson Racing – sharing a Riley & Scott with Elliot Forbes-Robinson and James Weaver.

Now driving with PR1/Mathieson in the PC class with Ken Dobson, Leitzinger spent 14 years at Dyson Racing – scoring seven overall ALMS victories. He has 10 wins overall – the most recent coming at Road America last year.

Weaver remembers his former team fondly.

“As a driver, he combines searing pace with an astonishingly safe pair of hands,” Weaver said.

“As a teammate, he is totally reliable, trustworthy and unfailingly gracious. Very few people are aware of what an enormous asset Butch was to Dyson Racing. His speed alone would have guaranteed him a place on the team, but it was his ability to jump into the car, with any setup, and within two laps extract a time from it that made him such a devastating asset.

“In a race, if the car lost its balance, he would just adapt his driving style and maintain the pace.

“It is this ability more than anything that allows him to provide such a crucial ingredient, vital to the team’s success.

“In sports car racing, if you divide the track time in practice between two drivers, you never get through as much setup work as one driver could on his own.

“Butch was always very gracious about me hogging the car in practice; he could see that this allowed us to go into the race with the best possible setup. I normally concentrated on the chassis and Butch took care of the tires. This strategy wouldn’t have worked without his gracious approach and enormous natural ability.”