The second round of the European Le Mans Series saw a return to the glorious track of the Red Bull Ring, with 41 cars lining up for the four-hour race. Unlike the previous days in the meeting, Raceday dawned with the Styrian track bathed in sunshine but before the start eyes were nervously turned upwards, hoping to avoid being caught out by the always changeable conditions in Austria.
Following Logan Sargeant’s stellar effort in qualifying, the Racing Team Turkey car lined up on pole-position with Bronze driver Salih Yoluc behind the wheel. Behind him Diego Menchaca, Nico Jamin and John Falb lined up while Roman Rusinov and Phil Hanson, would start in 7th and 8th respectively, ensuring fireworks in the opening few laps.
It would be John Falb that would make the best start in the G-Drive Racing Aurus, sweeping past Salih Yoluc and into the lead while the Turkish driver fended off Nico Jamin for a couple of corners. As the Frenchamn muscled his way past Yoluc and set off in pursuit of Falb the rest of the field managed to keep it clean through the opening lap.
It was a less straightforward opening in LMP3 where the pole-sitting DKR car of Jean-Phillipe Dayrault came in with front end damage. Bigger mayhem was to come in turn three where Rob Hodes lost the Team Virage Ligier under braking and collected both the 1 Aim Villorba Corse and Graff Ligiers, with Eric Trouillet the only one of the trio able to continue after that incident.
This brought out the safety car briefly. After the restart John Falb was highly impressive. The gentleman racer positioning his G-Drive Aurus so that neither Nico Jamin nor Phil Hanson could find a way past for a good fifteen minutes until the leader came upon traffic. Jamin in the lead United Autosports Oreca pounced. A lap later Hanson also found a way round Falb, settling into a United 1-2.
In LMP3 it was also United that led the way early on with Rob Wheldon holding off Nicolas Maulini and the fast starting Colin Noble. It would be Noble who would take the lead halfway through the first stint after a cracking fight with Wheldon.
John Falb’s heroics were cut short when race control handed out a drive through penalty for overtaking outside of track limits, relegating the #25 to the back of the LMP2 field, a decision the was contested furiously by the team who explained that the only alternative to the line Falb had taken would have been a collision.
In GTE Iron Lynx enjoyed an Iron grip on GTE with Matteo Cressoni nestling himself in the LMP3 midfield and building a substantial lead over the Spirit of Race and fellow Iron Lynx Ferraris.
Just before the one hour mark it started raining, penalties for track limits in this case with both Inter Europol LMP3s, the Dragonspeed LMP2, the #88 AF Corse Ferrari and rather importantly the #22 United Autosports Oreca of Phil Hanson all receiving drive throughs on a day that the #22 crew would rather forget.
Following the first round of LMP2 pit stops it was Nyck de Vries who emerged in the lead, courtesy of a very quick G-Drive stop and a wrestling match with the WRT car down pit road.
De Vries quickly set out to build a huge advantage, at times almost two seconds faster than the competition with WRT and the two United cars in hot pursuit.
In GTE it continued to be the #80 Iron Lynx Ferrari ahead of Francois Perrodo in the recovering AF Corse Ferrari, the Porsches and Aston Martin seemingly not playing a role in the first half of the race.
That race changed completely with 90 minutes remaining. A slight drizzle had started a few minutes earlier but this turned into a torrential downpour that brought out the safety car. Several cars were caught out and going off, with Job van Uitert the biggest casualty. His #32 United LMP2 coming back with substantial damage, the #65 Panis Racing Oreca of Julien Canal also heavily delayed, trapped in the gravel as multiple other cars managed to regain the racing surface, standing water overwhelming the grip of their slicks or intermediates.
Ahead of the field Nyck de Vries soldiered on, waiting on the safety car to vacate his #26 G-Drive Racing Aurus in favour of Franco Colapinto. The youngster clearly given a huge task as the weather deteriorated and tyre temperatures dropped behind the safety car.
A confused half hour or so followed with multiple pits stops, wave bys and cars sliding off behind the safety car as the rain continued to fall with race control clearly waiting for some sort of improvement in the pretty awful conditions before the safety car was called in.
In the melee of pit stops Robbert Kubica took the lead from Franco Colapinto, courtesy of the G-Drive Racing team calling the Argentinean driver in, in a bid to out-think the rest of the field and gain some sort of strategic advantage – it almost worked!
After the lengthy safety car Kubica set out to create a large gap to Colapinto with the former F1 driver lapping around two seconds a lap quicker than the only other car left on the lead lap. It would be a gap the Pole would need as the WRT car would need a longer stop.
That final fuel stop came with 45 minutes to go with Deletraz, by now aboard the WRT car, going on intermediates on a rapidly drying track, the two cars fighting an invisible battle until Colapinto came in with 30 minutes to go for a timed fuel stop.
The G-Drive crew executed the final part of their strategy perfectly and put the two Oreca’s together with Colapinto barely half a car length ahead of the championship leaders.
The rain though had stopped and the Red Bull rig performed its party piece of drying astonishingly quickly.
With Deletraz on fresher intermediates it was soon clear that the excellent game of cat and mouse was rapidly becoming an uneven battle, the young Argentinian increasingly struggling for grip, the Swiss forcing the #26 to go defensive, eventually forcing a pair of errors on consecutive laps at T3, the second of which saw a pathway through to the lead and, just over ten minutes later, a second consecutive win.
The final step on the podium would be filled, deservedly, by the #25, Falb’s efforts rewarded eventually after another good mid-race effort from Rui Andrade and a stellar finishing stint from Roberto Merhi who put himself back on the lead lap in the closing stages. The win in LMP2 Pro Am ahead of the #34 Racing Team Turkey squad and the #29 Ultimate trio, who were in the mix throughout the race too, providing a sub-class battle that added enormously to the overall LMP2 story this time out.
LMP3 saw the race almost turned upside down when the weather hit. Tony Wells kept the #7 Nielsen car in the mix but the car hit trouble in the late stages with an apparent electrical glitch seeing Colin Noble stop on circuit, losing time and positions before eventually getting back on track.
Before that the #15 RLR M-Sport car had been eliminated with rear damage inflicted by the #9 Graff Ligier in the hands of Rory Penttinen, the Graff car pitching the Mike Benham into a half spin, running off track itself as a result and then the two coming together with a double hit that saw right rear-end damage to both.
The #12 Racing Experience Duqueine ran wide at T1 and then stopped on track out of T2, requiring recovery into retirement.
The #2 United Ligier was in the mix, leading more than once in the hands of Rob Wheldon and Edouard Cauhope before a drive through penalty for the car entering pitlane across the white line dropped the car down the order.
The #8 Graff Ligier emerged from the melee in the lead but then drama in the closing stages as the team were dealt a 101 second stop and hold for too short a pitstop!
They pitted in the final laps, did not serve the full penalty, and rejoined, to avoid being held at pit out for the Checkered flag, knowing that a further penalty was likely.
That left the Cool Racing Ligier in the lead after another solid run, but it wasn’t over until the line, Rob Bell had lost the lead to the Graff car on rapidly degrading rubber, he was soldiering on to the finish when the lead was regained but was being close down fast by Joey Alders in the #11 EuroInternational Ligier, the pair would cross the line just a tenth of a second apart, Cool Racing a second consecutive victory!
Whilst the Graff car would cross the line third it would be the #13 Inter Europol Competition Ligier that would see their crew on the podium, but that aspect of the result was still being debated post-podiums – the Inter-Europol team asked to return the trophies, the Graff crew listed in the provisional result in third.
GTE looked like a Ferrari benefit, the Porsche had no answer to the 488s in the prevailing conditions, the Safety Car Melee though saw the Ferrari running order mixed up with the early race-leading #80 Iron Lynx car dropping behind the #88 AF Corse car and the #55 Spirit of Race Ferrari – The #80 had no way back but would take the final place on the podium.
Duncan Cameron’s fine opening stint set up a great second place result for the #55 with Matt Griffin soaking up the worst of the weather and David Perel powering home.
But the #88 AF Corse Ferrari would take the win, after missing the opening round in Barcelona, but hot on the heels of an opening race victory in the WEC at Spa too – Alessio Rovera again starred and showed he has pace in the wet to match his dry weather form.
Francois Perrodo had a spirited battle with Cameron early on and Manu Collard scored an ELMS race win 20 years after scoring the first ever win in the then IMSA-organised Series back in 2001 – at Sebring!
A word too for a hugely impressive run from the Iron Dames, all three drivers showing pace, running as high as second at one point, a spin for Manuela Gostner deep into her stint the only early race wrinkle before Rahal Frey, in the final 5 minutes and soon after going by the #93 Porsche for fourth had contact with the 911, the Ferrari into the gravel, too late for recovery and failing to cross the line to see the flag – the car cruelly unclassified.
