Just saw the last few laps. Awesome move by Mcnish

Prior to race start, Highcroft Racing (car #9) lodged a protest with IMSA regarding the fuel used on all the Porsche RS Spyder teams (cars 5, 6, 7, 16, and 20). The pit notes read:

"The entrant of Car No. 9 filed a protest against car Nos. 5, 6, 7, 16 and 20. The protest was filed in a timely manner prior to the start of the race. The entrant is protesting the above cars using what he believes to be illegal fuel (sic). Fuel samples have been drawn from the cars in question and will be sent to a testing lab for analysis. According to the Stewards, the race results will remain provisional until the fuel analysis is completed."

Upon further investigation, on Thursday of this week IMSA released a Competition Memo # ALMS 08-04 that allows competitors to use additional detergent (Techron) in the spec fuel provided by the Series. Understand up front that the detergent Techron is a current additive to the spec IMSA E10 fuel. Porsche approached IMSA about a variance to the fuel regulation as they struggled with a technical detail on their direct injection RS Spyder engine. Apparently the spec E10 fuel was causing detrimental levels of deposits to build up in the direct injectors leading to reliability concerns. IMSA issued the variance to allow Porsche (and any ALMS team) to run higher levels of Techron in the IMSA E10 fuel. This variance has been in discussion for at least 2-3 weeks ahead of the event. The additional Techron additive was administered to the fuel by IMSA this weekend. It is our understanding that Acura has been consulted throughout the variance consideration.

Now what would be gained from Highcroft effectively protesting the variance everyone knew about? Not sure for the moment and given their championship aspirations have now gone by the way side there is the strong possibility that this will simply go away. We hope...