Motorcycle racing icon Valentino Rossi stood on the podium at Le Mans for the first time as a four-wheel racer, to cap off an eventful weekend of Michelin Le Mans Cup races in the Road To Le Mans double-header.
Race 1 on Thursday evening was littered with multiple incidents, Safety Cars, and Slow Zones – beginning with a five-car pileup in the first Mulsanne Chicane on the first lap which took out several GT3 cars.
Timothy Whale and Max Hesse took the win at the end of Race 1 aboard the #31 Team WRT BMW M4, ahead of the #86 HCR with CaffeineSix Porsche 911 GT3 R (Timothy Creswick/Anders Fjordbach) and the #10 Racing Spirit of LeMan Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Arnold Robin/Valentin Haase-Clot) in third.
Alex Martin spun and crashed aboard the #64 Team Parker Racing Porsche in the final ten minutes to bring out the Safety Car which would effectively end the race.
The LMP3 and overall win in Race 1 went to the #4 Nielsen Racing Duquiene M30-D08 of John Melsom and Matthew Bell, after a penalty given to the #58 Team Virage Ligier JS P320 of Martin Rich and Manuel Espirito Santo.
Espirito Santo was given a five-second time penalty for overtaking a GT3 car and the Safety Car, which demoted the Team Virage #58 to fourth in the final classification.
The #77 Team Thor Ligier (Audunn Gudmundsson/Colin Noble) overtook the #97 COOL Racing Ligier (Luis Sanjuan/David Droux) in the final minutes in order to secure what would have been third place, but with the penalty, both crews would share the podium.
This was even after Droux got into an incident down the home straight which sent the #20 United Autosports Ligier of Andy Meyrick into the pit lane barrier, and off into the gravel.
As for Rossi and Jerome Policand in the #46 Team WRT BMW, they struggled to a 13th place finish in GT3 during Race 1 – but they would have their day in Race 2, which was another race littered with Safety Car and Slow Zone interventions.
Rossi had come out victorious in a battle for position with the #86 Porsche of Fjordbach when he dove up the inside of Tertre Rouge and overtook Fjordbach to cap off a spirited pursuit.
That battle was for second position on track, with the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 296 (Hiroshi Koizumi/Kei Cozzolino) well out in front. However, the spirited Cozzolino was given a drive-through penalty late in the race for erratic driving. The penalty was never served on track, it was instead converted into a 30-second time penalty which dropped the #51 Ferrari to 16th in class.
That gave Policand and Rossi a very famous victory in GT3, and with Whale and Hesse’s #31 sprinting up the order in the final laps, Team WRT’s BMW M4 GT3s took a 1-2 finish in class – one that might, perhaps, be a precursor of what’s to come for WRT and BMW at Le Mans!
George Kurtz and Russell Ward finished third in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Meanwhile, in LMP3 it was COOL Racing’s Sanjuan and Droux that picked up the win after a similar case of the leader at the chequered flag being ruled out of top honours.
This time it was the #77 Team Thor Ligier which was given a 36-second time penalty after the race, for not respecting the prescribed pit stop time. Gudmundsson and Noble would be classified 15th in their class.
That meant that Droux’s pass on the #33 WTM by Rinaldi Racing Duquiene of Leonard Weiss with three laps to go would decide the victory, despite Weiss fighting back he and Torsten Kratz would have to settle for second behind Droux and Sanjuan.
In third place was the #2 CD Sport Ligier (Fabien Michal/Kirill Smal).
Image credits, BMW and Le Mans Cup
