There is only one way to go out and truly celebrate a one-year racing anniversary — blow away the competition. That’s exactly what Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud did in the Utah Grand Prix Sunday afternoon at Miller Motorsports Park.

Dominating might be putting it lightly, considering that the de Ferran/Pagenaud team lead all but two laps of the entire two hour and 45 minute timed race. Also their winning margin of over 73 seconds was the biggest so far in the American Le Mans Series history. De Ferran Motorsports debuted their car for racing in the American Le Mans Series for the first time last year at MMP.

“I just put my head down and drove as hard as I could,” said de Ferran. “It is probably one of the best cars I have ever driven.”

In fact, de Ferran Motorsports team made little changes to their Acura ARX-02a after qualifying on the pole and before the day of the race, which took tremendous courage. That courage paid off in a sizable victory. “The car felt like it was missing a little traction and our work hit the nail right on the head,” de Ferran said.

The Utah Grand Prix went on without any major bumps or bruises but there was a little scuffle in the straight-away right after waving the green flag, and all of it was started by a cone that was tipped over.

In the hustle and bustle that typically follows the waving of the green flag, a tipped-over cone that was laying in the road caused havoc in the race. After being run over, the cone actually caused the Risi Competizone Ferrari to skid off the road.

However, after the cone incident the race ran relatively clean. After a little spacing between the different types of cars, de Ferran gradually augmented his lead little by little with each lap on the competition. The only two laps de Ferran and Pagenaud didn’t lead was during a pit stop, which they quickly regained.

Finishing in a distant second in the LMP1 behind de Ferran and Pagenaud was the driving tandem of Scott Sharp and David Brabham for the Patron Highcroft Racing team. In third place in LMP1 was a trio of Jon and Clint Field and Chapman Ducote for the Intersport Racing team, finishing 10 laps behind the leaders.

The race was much closer down the wire for the LMP2 cars. The duo of Luis Diaz and Adrian Fernandez had a comfortable lead until about five minutes to go when Fernandez was behind the wheel. While Fernandez, driving for the Lowe’s Fernandez Racing, was trying to finish he found himself in a Dyson Racing Team sandwich.

With Butch Leitzinger of the Dyson team gaining ground on Fernandez, Leitzinger got a little help from his friends of the Dyson Racing team. Guy Smith, who was several laps behind, got in front of Fernandez to try and slow him down so Leitzinger could catch up. The plan nearly worked but the smart driving of Fernandez spotted him a win by only a half a second.

In the GT2 class, Joerg Bergmeister and Patrick Long held the lead nearly throughout for the Flying Lizard Motorsports team in their Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, but they did receive stiff competition from Wolf Henzler and Marc Lieb of the Farnbacher Loles Racing team.

In the inaugural launch of the ALMS Challenge class cars, the local drivers stole the show. The husband and wife team of Melanie and Martin Snow from Pleasant Grove drove hard all day. They weren’t wire-to-wire leaders but overcame the obstacles and pulled out the inaugural victory in their Porsche 911 GT3 Cup.

The fastest drivers on the day with the best lap times were Pagenaud with a lap time of 1:32.815 in the LMP1 car, which was good enough for the new race lap record.

In the LMP2 car, Adrian Fernandez clocked in with a time of 1:35.302. Patrick Long earned the fastest driver award with a 1:48.818 and Guy Cosmo set the inaugural record for ALMS Challenge cars with a 1:56.939 on the day.

Jake Gordon: jgordon@tooeletranscript.com