(Mosport Int'l Raceway, 19 August) Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro in a Joest Audi R8 took victory at Mosport after 115 exciting laps, ahead of the Panoz which had won at Portland. The race was decided just 15 minutes before the end when Johnny Herbert went off the track in the Champion Audi R8 and into the tire barrier at the bottom of the very fast downhill Turn Two. Before that, the former Formula One driver had led stages of the race together with his partner Andy Wallace (who handed the R8 over to Herbert in second place), and had closed the gap on race leader Emanuele Pirro to just 2.6 seconds from over 18 seconds in the fifteen minutes prior to his crash.

Herbert, who relieved Wallace at about the one-hour point in the race, was charging after Pirro, who he'd already passed once with a thrilling move at the last corner at the restart after a full-course caution. Herbert was setting his fastest laps of the race just prior to his shunt. Pirro took the lead by a narrow margin after his final pit stop, when the Joest team opted not to change tires at their final stop. The Champion squad had changed just the left-front at their last pit stop, a move that gave Herbert the grip needed to push the race leader hard in the race's closing stages.

Like last year, torrential rain caused a lot of action at Mosport. In the early stages of the race the former Canadian Grand Prix circuit was extremely slippery. On the opening lap Rinaldo Capello and Andy Wallace spun off with their R8 sportscars with one of the Panoz. While Wallace was lucky not to hit anything hard, the repairs to Capello´s Infineon R8 lasted seven laps. The car finally retired shortly after the driver change, when Tom Kristensen came onto the wet part of the track on his slick tyres while passing a slower car, crashing heavily into the barriers.

The colorful Champion Audi sustained right front corner bodywork and suspension damage in Herbert's crash, and Brad Kettler's ace crew has their work cut out for them with just a handful of days before action begins at Mid-Ohio, prior to Saturday's debut ALMS race at the famous midwest circuit.