With only one championship out of four sewn up before the final race, the sixth round of the European Le Mans Series was eagerly anticipated as the forty car grid lined up for the final time this year.
A very clean start meant that COOL Racing’s Charles Miles converted his pole position into the lead ahead of Algarve Pro Racing’s Richard Bradley and Manuel Maldonado.
As Milesi pulled away from the field, Maldonado started dropping back, losing positions to newly crowned ELMS champion Robert Kubica who started the Championship winning Team WRT car, United Autosport teammate Phil Hanson and G-Drive’s Roman Rusinov.
The opening phase in the LMP3 class was all about the fight for the lead between United’s Wheldon and Matthieu de Barbuat in the DKR Duqueine. The DKR team started the race in second and in their fight with COOL Racing needed to finish well ahead of the Swiss team to take the title.
A great move around the outside of turn one by De Barbuat after a fabulously close and fairly fought tussle saw the DKR team take the lead on the fifteenth lap of the race.
A few laps later the safety car came out after the Duqueine Engineering Oreca lost a wheel coming up to the straight, spinning wildly. The AIM Villorba Corse Ligier tried to avoid the LMP2 but in doing so hit the end of the pit wall head-on, destroying the car. Luckily Andreas Laskaratos was able to extract himself out of the car, a testament to the strength of the Ligier.
🎙️ “It just caught me by surprise. I feel like it’s my fault.”@a_laskaratos reacts following his scary crash minutes ago.#ELMS #4HPortimao pic.twitter.com/vp7pKKJT9R
— European Le Mans Series (@EuropeanLMS) October 24, 2021
With the track covered in carbon shards and oil, the Race Director chose to red-flag the race and give the safety crews enough time to clean up the main straight – the race clock still running. The work continued for about half an hour before the field set off again, with Milesi’s lead obliterated and the 38 remaining cars bunched up behind the safety car, ready for the restart.
The COOL car got away well enough but had both the Algarve Pro and WRT Oreca’s breathing down its neck.
In LMP3 Rob Wheldon made the most of an aggressive restart to retake the lead, demoting De Barbuat to second with Martin Hippe in third in the lead Inter Europol car.
With the LMP2 pro-am championship mathematically still a possibility, Milesi again had the hammer down out in front overall, quickly re-establishing his lead. For COOL to win the Pro-Am championship it would have to win while the #25 G-Drive Racing Aurus basically would have to DNF and the Frenchman seemed intent on putting his team in as good a position as possible before pitting on lap 29 and handing over to teammate Alexandre Coigny. He was followed in by Richard Bradley who would hand over to Sophia Floersch.
At the same time, Phil Hanson muscled his way past Kubica for third and inherited the lead in the pitstop cycle before coming in himself to vacate the car for Jonathan Aberdein.
A fast pair of stops, without changing tyres, by the United Autosports team gave it a 1-2 with Aberdein leading ahead of Manuel Maldonado while WRT’s stop was extremely long meaning that Yifei Ye slotted in back in sixth, behind the Panis, G-Drive and Algarve Pro cars while the COOL Racing team was now solely focussed on winning the LMP2 Pro-Am race.
The first pit stop cycle in LMP3 ensured De Barbuat got back in front of Wheldon, the two drivers brilliantly slugging it out all throughout the opening stint. It become a three-way fight when Martin Hippe slotted in between them after a super stop from the Inter Europol team.
In the meantime, COOL Racing was dealt a massive blow as Nicolas Maulini’s pit stop took far longer than hoped for, pushing the LMP3 championship leaders right back to 14th while DKR now firmly held the lead. More bad luck would follow the championship leaders as a puncture put the final nail in the coffin as far as the team’s championship hopes were concerned.
With Franco Colapinto hunting down both United cars, and Sophia Floersch doing a great job in keeping the #24 in contention too, it looked like the G-Drive Aurus was in the driver’s seat to pick up the lead following the second round of stops but a drive-through for track limits meant it was all change at the front.
WRT took over the lead in LMP2 after the United Autosports cars pitted and took tyres, meaning their stop now was longer and dropped them back to third and fourth, just behind Floersch in the Algarve Pro car.
Tom Gamble was the first to finally hunt Floersch down and passed her for second but before Job van Uitert could join in the fun the Algarve Pro car came in unexpectedly early. A puncture turned out to be the culprit, putting the team on the back foot.
Van Uitert then proved to be the fastest car on the track and was closing in on his teammate before a miscommunication with Markus Pommer in the BHK LMP2 resulted in contact in turn 8. Pommer was on his out-lap and turned in wide, opening the door for Van Uitert to lap Pommer before the two collided. The resulting front-end damage forced the United Autosports car into the pits for a new nose, effectively an opportunity for a United double podium was gone.
In LMP3 DKR remained fully in control, especially after the #2 United Autosports car picked up a stop and go for track limits. This meant that the #13 Inter Europol Competition Ligier impressively was the closest opposition, only a few seconds back to the Duqueine and ahead of the Graff Ligier.
Upfront in the LMP2 class, the lead changed hands again during the pit stops with Tom Gamble staying in the car and on his set of tyres while WRT switched Yifei Ye for Louis Deletraz and with the longer stop that comes with it, the Belgian team dropped to second, seven seconds behind United Autosports
Impressively Tom Gamble was able to hold off Louis Deletraz for the remainder of the race, taking United Autosport’s first victory of the year ahead of the newly crowned champions. Third went to Algarve Pro Racing with Fabian Habsburg putting in a mega final stint of the ELMS season to fight back after the team’s earlier puncture.
LMP2 Pro-Am went to COOL Racing after a dominant display and a particularly strong race from Alexandre Coigny. And although the team was sad to lose the title to the G-Drive Racing squad, John Falb ad Rui Andrade taking the Drivers crown, Nicolas Lapierre expressed pride in the efforts of his young team.
LMP3 went the way of Team DKR, taking their fifth title in a row and their first after four crowns in the Michelin Le Mans Cup. Laurents Hörr and Matthieu de Barbuat saw off Inter Europol Competition’s strong effort to bag the team’s fourth victory in a row. Their title means that DKR will in fact be present with an LMP2 in next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and likely, subject to confirmation, for a full season in the ELMS too.
Third, eventually went to the #2 United Autosports Ligier after the drive-through pushed the team out of contention.
GTE
Rino Mastrodarni in the #80 Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GTE EVO took an impressive start by overtaking no less than 7 cars on his first lap. He was followed in the ranks by François Perrodo in the #88 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE EVO and Sarah Bovy in the #83 Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GTE EVO.
The pole-sitting #95 Aston Martin had a difficult start and rapidly dropped to 10th in the category.
Bovy overtook Perrodo towards the tenth lap but soon span at Turn 1 and lost her position. She eventually regained it at the restart of the race following Laskaratos’s shunt.
On the 35th lap, the top cars had their first pit stops. The #77 and the #93 Proton Competition Porsche 911 RSR 19 went for a different fueling strategy to the ones followed by the #80, the #83 and the #88. In turn, Christian Ried in the #77 temporarily took the lead ahead of the #80 Iron Lynx driven by Rino Mastrodani and Michael Fassbender in the #93, the German/ Irish actor having by far his best race yet to keep the effort in real contention.
At the top of the third hour and as the two Proton Competition Porsches pitted again, the #80 driven by Matteo Cressoni regained the lead ahead of the #93 driven by Richard Lietz, Michelle Gatting in the #83 and Cooper MacNeil in the #77.
As the race entered its final hour, Lietz managed to overtake Cressoni just before the top three LMGTE cars pitted one last time where the Iron Lynx squad managed to reverse the order again!
After that episode, positions froze until the chequered flag with the #80 driven by Miguel Molina leading Felipe Laser in the #93 and Rahel Frey in the #83. The #55 Spirit of Race shared by Duncan Cameron, Matt Griffin and David Perel finished fourth, a good enough result for the Swiss team to get an invite for the 24 Hours of Le Mans for their second-place finish in the Class Championship.
The 388 AF Corse car which had also been in contention for the Championship and the second-place finish was quick in the early part of the race but fell back after multiple penalties for track limits, costing the team over a lap to the leaders.
