Thiriet by TDS Racing took the overall win for #1 by 46 seconds from Signatech Alpine but that didn’t tell anywhere near the full story of this exciting and changeable race.
The first 45 minutes gave nose-to-tail racing at the front lap after lap, Hartley (#18) taking Beche (#1) from the rolling start to get second place with those three then locked into combat for the rest of their stints, never getting too far away from the other leading P2 contenders either. Starter motor trouble afflicted the Murphy Prototypes Oreca on every stop though and they dropped out of contention despite some big improvements for Mark Patterson and some very fast lappery by Hartley in the final stint of the race.
Signatech Alpine also lost time with starting problems, crucially also dropping them behind the Greaves car in the hands of Heinemeier Hansson. Nelson Panciatici took several laps to get past into second again, those two setbacks meaning the leaders had simply gone too far up the road to be caught.
A strong performance for Morand Racing saw them come home third overall, Greaves losing the place after receiving a late one minute stop and go penalty due to Heinemeier Hansson crossing the white line at pit exit in order to make the pass on Signatech Alpine’s Panciatici, who was emerging at the same time. Race Performance took fourth ahead of the recovering Greaves car with Murphy coming home sixth.
Jota had led throughout Turvey’s opening stint but a longer stop saw Beche inherit the lead into their second stints. A slightly slower out lap for Thiriet meant Dolan inherited the lead. He held the Frenchman off until 1:20 to go when Thiriet put a perfectly executed and incisive move on him as they came across traffic into Tosa and TDS began to pull away from there. A couple of contacts for Dolan saw him first drop down the order and then eliminated from the race.
In GTE Pro again the first stint was close at the front. Griffin led Long (just) until he had to back off with the car running low on fuel at the end of his first stint. Milesi took over from Long and the IMSA Porsche went backwards through the field whereas RAM Racing’s #52 simply went from strength to strength to win by a lap. It was nearly a one-two for RAM but despite Montecalvo’s (#53) best (and they were good) efforts a brilliant charge from Cioci and Leo gave those honours to AF Corse, taking the flag just 1.8 seconds behind #53.
PC was an uncontested but impressive win for Hirsch and Loup Chatin.
GTC saw a pitlane speeding penalty for the Ecurie Ecosse BMW but a sterling drive from Ollie Millroy brought them back to finish third. The Kox Lamborghini showed great pace and was unchallenged early on but a miscalculation on driver time meant that they had to put Nico Pronk back in the car for the final lap. They cut that too fine as well, being held at the end of the pitlane as the end of the race was so close. A disqualification was the result, rather than the third place they had been occupying. A maiden ELMS race win then for SMP Racing’s #69 car ahead of AF Corse’s #62.
Paul Slinger
