It was a relatively well-organised start in beautiful conditions, despite some of the drivers having expressed concern that four different classes with different acceleration, top speed and braking abilities was always going to lead to chaos into the first corner. Brendan Hartley slotted the #18 Murphy Oreca tightly onto the tail of the leading Jota Zytek and displaced Matthias Beche in the #1 TDS car back to third. Franck Mailleux also moved up a place to fifth in the #43 Morand Morgan at the expense of Greaves’ Tom Kimber-Smith in #3. Jonathan Hirschi had a poor start in the HVM Status Lola and was swamped by the leading GT cars.
Ladygin went from fifth to third in the #69 GTC Ferrari at the start, behind Kox and Gai, so he decided to consolidate and “to try and follow the class leaders and improve my laptimes.” The strategy worked well and teed up a fine GTC win for SMP Racing, pleasing co-driver Viktor Shaitar; “I have always wanted to race at Imola so I was really happy to be taking part in this race and very happy to have won it too.”
The first 45 minutes didn’t give us any real side to side action amongst the overall leaders but it was enthralling nonetheless to see the top six drivers, all very much in contention and often nose to tail and trading fastest laps. This even continued as they worked their way through the traffic, which began after just 15 minutes of racing.
Peter Kox led GTC in the Lamborghini and was right on the tail of Camathias (#66) and Jeanette (#53) in the opening laps; those two Ferraris running fourth and third in GTE respectively as Griffin and Long eased ahead in front. Long pushed Griffin hard through the first stint but there was a lot of respect and understanding between these two long-term friends, even as they clouted kerbs nose to tail, almost lifting inside wheels in unison, and it was the fuel tank of the Ferrari that ultimately dictated when Long should take the lead on Griffin’s in-lap.
“We pushed the envelope a bit too long with the fuel in my first stint,” said Griffin. “ It coughed about halfway around the lap, but I knew we were in a good position so I just backed off and turned the engine map down and watched Pat drive away. All the way through the first stint I knew I was going to double-stint the tyres so I had to watch the back tyres especially. I gapped Pat at the start but then he came back, but I think he was struggling a bit for grip at the end.” Jeanette was unchallenged in third through his first stint and eased away from Camathias throughout.
With half an hour gone the top six were still covered by less than ten seconds – the top five by only six seconds – so it was Greaves that were not quite matching the pace of those ahead.
At 41 minutes Panciatici pitted the Signatech Alpine and Ragues took over with new tyres. Kimber-Smith also pitted but stayed in the car. On the next lap the lead trio, still closely bunched, all pitted together; Hartley swapped to Patterson, but Turvey and Beche stayed onboard.
A ten second quicker stop for TDS over Jota saw Beche emerge with effectively a nine second lead over Jota, although Turvey would reduce that gap through the remainder of his time in the car. Mailleux had stayed out in the Morand Morgan to inherit the lead.
Problems for the Murphy car not re-starting dropped Patterson out of contention, and the problem hit them hard for the next two stops too; so sixth was as good as it would get for them, even with an inspired charge from Hartley in his final stint.
Mailleux was the last of the front runners to pit and it was a good strategy because he rejoined third, behind Beche and Turvey but ahead of Kimber-Smith, Ragues and Niederhauser.
With 50 minutes gone, the Ecurie Ecosse BMW pitted and Smith handed over to Joe Twyman, the team’s strategy all weekend being to ensure that Ollie Millroy did not set the fastest lap in any session, so he wouldn’t have to start the race and could instead be deployed at the end. A pitlane speed infringement and stop and go penalty was not part of the strategy though.
Gai, Kox and Ladygin made their stops and Pronk took over the Lamborghini, quickly succumbing to the superior pace of Mediani. Shaitar took over the SMP Racing Ferrari and he too passed Pronk easily.
In PC, Hirsch had a solid run whilst Lecuyer and Pons both had spins. Ayari took over from Pons and took second and that was that, the PC cars rarely saw each other on track. It isn’t providing any kind of spectacle but it is providing a stage for drivers like Paul Loup Chatin, who looks set to be a rising star from what we have seen so far; “The balance of the car was very good,” he said. “Gary gave me a good lead and I managed to keep that gap the same because the aim was to make a safe win and not take risks over the kerbs. There is not much run-off here. It is a good result and I hope we can come back here again next year.”
Within the first hour Beche had put a lap on the eighth placed Lola Coupe of HVM Status. Its driver, Jonathan Hirschi, must have had some interesting thoughts as he saw the car he so nearly won in at the last round come through and disappear into the distance…
After the first hour the third and fourth placed Ferraris had pitted, with RAM Racing’s Montecalvo taking over a 21 second lead over Bertolini in the JMW car. With the lead Ferrari brimmed with fuel and on its way again with Griffin still at the wheel, and Milesi having taken over the IMSA Porsche, it was soon a Ferrari 1, 2, 3. Milesi is just not quick enough in this company to be able to preserve Long’s sterling work.
Approaching the halfway mark and the HVM Status GP Lola was buried in its third gravel trap of the weekend, this time at Acque Minerale. All incidents, and there weren’t many, were cleared under waved yellows, without a safety car in sight. Turvey was still closing the gap on Beche, down to two seconds, with both cars setting fastest laps of the race thus far and clearing away from Morand, Greaves and Signatech.
The halfway stops began and we saw a more realistic pattern emerge as all cars had now switched drivers, so the cars who had been delayed changing drivers in the first round of stops spent around 30 seconds less in the pits this time around.
Despite a slightly quicker pitstop, Thiriet, now in the #1 TDS Oreca, posted a slower out lap than Dolan did for Jota and that put the Zytek just ahead on track.
With an incisive move at Tosa with 42 minutes to go, both cars ducking out to pass traffic and taking advantage of Simon Dolan staying out wide, Pierre Thiriet cut back across the backmarker and made the decisive move to take the lead. The two cars stayed closely tied until contact between them broke the floor on the Jota Zytek and it became rather skittish, falling away out of contention. Contact with the #39 DKR car, which had a deeply unimpressive race, when “he just braked coming out of the corner” put Dolan into the gravel for several laps. A stone had also taken out the alternator and would ultimately lead to the car “losing electrical items one by one until it just died completely only six minutes from the end. It is a wonder it lasted that long really.”
Back to the halfway point, Natacha Gachnang took over the Morand Morgan, so that in itself was progress from Silverstone, where the car was out of the race before she had even thought about putting her helmet on. She could not resist the pace of Heinemeier Hansson in the Greaves Zytek though and he made the pass into Tosa. These two would squabble for a couple of laps before Heinemeier Hansson pulled away and found himself on the tail, almost literally, of the Signatech Alpine coming out of the pits on cold tyres with Nelson Panciatici on board; Signatech having lost around 30 seconds with their own starter problems.
Heinemeier-Hansson made the move easily with warm tyres, whilst Panciatici weaved behind, desperately trying to get some heat into his tyres and come back into the battle. H-H had however crossed the white line coming out of the pits, arguing that the Alpine seemed to be accelerating slowly and must have had a problem. The race director either disagreed or thought it was irrelevant and gave them a one minute stop and go penalty, allowing Signatech to move up to finish in an uncontested second place. It also led to Morand moving up to third despite a late splash and dash (boding well for Le Mans where they will be joined by the impressive Olivier Lombard) and Race Performance taking an impressive fourth place, ahead of the recovering Greaves car.
Panciatici had undeniably lost time fighting with a defensive, but fair, Heinemeier Hansson; “I lost a lot of time behind him but he was defending well. I couldn’t reach TDS having lost so much time with the pitstop problem and behind the Greaves car. There was no problem with my car when I was accelerating out of the pits. The pace was definitely there during the long stint on the tyres; we could double stint easily, so maybe we could have done more. We have enough information for Le Mans after this weekend, so we can go there with good confidence. It is good to get a podium and I am very happy for the team.”
Teammate Ragues was thinking about what might have been; “Without the starting problem you could say we would have been 17 seconds off the leader, but it is more than that because we lost time behind Greaves and being more than a minute down means it is hard to [justify the need to] push, so we would have been much closer than 17 seconds and probably fighting for the win. Because of the problem and the cold tyres, as we are not allowed to use tyre warmers in this series, Nelson could not stay ahead of the Greaves car and it was always going to take one or two laps to get them warm and get good grip.”
An incident for Bertolini lost him 45 seconds in the #66 JMW Ferrari, possibly having to reset due to a misfire. Montecalvo and Leo were back past him as a result. Leo closed the gap down on Montecalvo and took second place when the American took a trip through the gravel at a slightly greasy Villeneuve, following spots of rain. The RAM Racing man didn’t let the AF Corse car get away though and would fight again with Cioci in the dying minutes of the race, again making a slight error across the kerbs under pressure and letting the Italian through and RAM Racing bookmarking the podium.
Ollie Millroy took over the Ecurie Ecosse BMW at the end, as planned, and drove a fine and consistent stint, inheriting the final GTC podium spot from Kox Racing, who suffered a disqualification. Peter Kox; “It is an administrative mistake unfortunately – we calculated the driving time for Nico too short. Hans (Reiter) said to get him out for one lap at the end and it would be okay, but I still needed to push hard to keep third place. I came in at the end, thinking we had timed it right with the position of the leader and the time left but they stopped him at the end of the pitlane as they said it was too close to the end of the race. He couldn’t go out onto the track so he couldn’t do his minimum time and we were excluded.” Hans Reiter denied that he had put Kox on the team-boss naughty step…
Mathias Beche: “I lost a place at the start to the Murphy car but I was on the outside of the grid so there was nothing I could do there. I had a good start, but Brendan [Hartley] took the place intelligently and stuck to the car ahead. I didn’t want to push too hard because I knew that his co-driver is not very strong, but I had to work in the traffic and be aggressive, although everyone was fair. We had a very low top speed here; we were better than the traffic in the corners but worse on the straights. It was impossible to get past [Hartley]. We did a great first pitstop and that allowed me to take the lead. Pierre Thiriet did a brilliant job and I hope we can now fight for [his] Championship.”
Franck Mailleux: “I had a good start, round the outside of the Greaves car, and I almost passed the Alpine too. I stayed fifth and the pace was okay. We still need more experience but it is good to have had a full run and for Natacha to finish her race. It has helped us prepare for Le Mans.”
Natacha Gachnang: “I didn’t know we were third until ten minutes before the end. I was just focussing on the racing line and driving my best. It was not so difficult to get to the end. I like the track, I was really confident with the car so I had fun!”
Johnny Mowlem: “You don’t underestimate what the team has done in coming here and completely smashing everyone else; and that is what we have done, against some great teams. At Silverstone I think it is fair to say I did most of the work, but here Matt did, he makes my job very easy. The Michelin tyre was unbelievable, we were just hammering it and they were awesome. We have beaten Nick Tandy and now Pat Long to pole in both races too and that says something about this team.”
Brendan Hartley: “I did everything I could today; I passed Beche into Turn 1 off the start and I think I was quicker than Turvey to be honest. Every time he gapped me I was able to close him back down again, but passing on a fast track like this is difficult. I came in for the first pitstop literally on his gearbox; you couldn’t have stood between us.
“We had a problem with the starter motor and that is a real shame. Mark did a great job – he started the race at the pace he had got to in practice and picked up where he left off, improving his laptime by three seconds a lap by the end of his stint. It bodes well for Le Mans when Karun Chandhok will join us and that should be a strong line-up. The main point of this race was to prepare for Le Mans and we’ve improved too. It is better to have had that problem here than at Le Mans. Everyone did a solid job, even if we didn’t get the result that we deserved.
“On pace alone I think we would have been on the podium. I was really pushing at the end because the team told me I could catch Simon Dolan who was 35 seconds ahead. I got to within two seconds of him and he was in a group of around four cars ahead and then I saw him go off, so we got the place.”
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