United Autosports’ #22 ORECA 07 Gibson of Oliver Jarvis, Phil Hanson and Marino Sato claimed a dramatic victory in the penultimate race of the 2023 ELMS season at Portimao this evening, which was held in changeable conditions.
Their second victory of 2023 was sealed after a late-race duel between Jarvis and Alex Lynn in the #25 championship-leading Algarve Pro Racing ORECA.
Lynn came achingly close to sealing the LMP2 class title for him and his team in the final hour and would have done so with a win. But Jarvis forced his way through at the Turn 5 hairpin with 10 minutes to go and finished 8 tenths ahead at the end. That pass ensured the title race will go down to the wire.
“It was entertaining in the car, to be honest,” Jarvis explained after the race. “I think my teammates did a great job and the team made some pretty incredible calls.
“I wasn’t always sure in the car, but it worked out perfectly in the end. I was seriously pumped up. When we led it under the safety car, when we boxed a lap later, I thought ‘we’ve given away track position’, but I was in the car, I was ready to give it everything, I wanted to take huge risks to try and win it.
“I must admit, I wasn’t sure we would win at that point, because I know I had to do a bit of fuel saving. But the gap started to come down and as soon as I caught Alex I thought ‘He’s picked up his pace.’ The moment I got a chance I just stuck it down on the inside and took it.”
While APR will be slightly disappointed with a second place finish, Alex Lynn, James Allen and Kyffin Simpson head into Sunday’s finale with a 20-point advantage in the LMP2 class standings over the #22 trio (who are now up to second). They also wrapped up the overall ELMS Drivers Trophy with today’s result, which was earned with yet another hugely impressive performance from all three of them.
Behind, the #65 Panis Racing ORECA claimed third in the race and heads into the final race with an outside chance of a title.
As does the #30 Duqueine Team ORECA, which finished fifth after Neel Jani was tapped into a spin while sitting second and battling for the lead at the final restart. The #30 crew are 26 points adrift though, and require pole, a win and misfortune for others to claim the title.
The #47 COOL Racing ORECA finished fourth.
LMP2 Pro/Am was won by the #37 COOL Racing ORECA of Malthe Jakobsen, Alex Coigny and Nicolas Lapierre, after the #24 Nielsen Racing ORECA crossed the line first but was handed a 10-second time penalty for contact.
The penalty came after Mathias Beche muscled past the #83 AF Corse ORECA, which finished third. Matthieu Vaxiviere and Ben Barnicoat took advantage of a strong first stint from Francois Perrodo and ensured that Vaxiviere and Perrodo (the full-season pair) head into the final race leading the championship.
It is extremely close though, with three points separating the top three.
It was a nail-biter in Pro/Am in the fourth hour, with Vaxiviere initially leading and tasked with holding off a hard-charging Jakobsen in the #37.
Jakobsen ran nose-to-tail with the #83, but was tagged by a spinning Tristan Vautier in the #20 APR ORECA and dropped to fourth with just over 20 minutes to go.
The #24 Nielsen Racing ORECA inherited second at the time, and the #21 United Autosports ORECA took third, but Jakobsen and Beche were not done. Jakobsen fought back to secure the win and Beche settled for second after his recovery.
Further down the order, Racing Team Turkey’s ORECA finished sixth, salvaging a decent haul of points after hitting major trouble in the opening hour.
Charlie Eastwood, Salih Yoluc and Louis Deletraz’s hopes of winning the overall LMP2 Driver’s title faded fast in this race, after Yoluc lost two laps in Hour 1 while beached in the gravel during the first heavy rain shower.
However, despite falling to third, the LMP2 Pro/Am title race is still within reach after their recovery drive. The three safety cars later in the race and subsequent pass-arounds allowed them to battle back from ninth in class after a strong performance from Deletraz in the final stint.
In LMP3, WTM Rinaldi’s #12 Duqueine took the victory but the headline is that COOL Racing claimed the title with a fourth-place finish.
Marcos Siebert, Adrien Chila and Alejandro Garcia had a clean, steady run to the flag in the #17 Ligier JS P320, with all three drivers running mistake-free despite the tricky conditions.
All they needed was a finish of seventh place or better to win the title, but it was sealed before the finish, when the contending #13 Inter Europol Ligier retired after the car caught fire out on track with Wyatt Brichacek at the wheel in the final hour. The fire was caused by cracked bell housing leaking oil onto the exhaust.
Winning the title a race early caps off a hugely impressive season for COOL Racing’s LMP3 trio, who won three of the first four races and set pole at the season opener.
“I am so happy, it’s incredible,” Chila said after the race. “There was massive pressure (for COOL) to be champion for a second time in a row, so the most important thing was to bring the car home.
“It was difficult but I enjoyed it.”
Ahead, the #35 Ultimate Ligier finished second in class, behind the WTM Duqueine which was catapulted up the order after the team opted to complete both its long stops early in the race.
“It was really good on the strategic side for us today, because I was in for the start so my driving time was done within the two mandatory pitstops,” said WTM winning driver Leonard Weiss. “We had three hours to go in the race and we, after [the] mandatory pitstops, we focused on ourselves and pushed through to the very end.”
The #4 DKR Engineering Duqueine took a surprise third-place finish after the #7 Nielsen Racing Ligier, which was on course for a second-place finish, dropped to seventh. An error from Ryan Harper-Ellam proved costly, a spin sent him off into the gravel leaving him stranded with just minutes remaining in the race.
GTE meanwhile was a topsy-turvy affair through the changes in weather conditions and safety car periods that bunched up the field.
In the end, it was a Porsche 1-2-3 and a 1-2 for Proton with the #77 Porsche taking the win after a late race duel between Julien Andlauer and Alessio Picariello.
The title battle will go down to the wire, with the #16 Proton crew holding a slim lead of just three points over the #60 Iron Lynx Porsche that recovered to third after sitting eighth in the penultimate hour.
The win for the #77 is also significant because Christian Reid has equalled the all-time record for ELMS GTE wins, with 11.
“It was such a great race, it was really easy to make mistakes, but we were always on the right tyres and everyone did a great job,” Reid said.
Off the podium the first of the Ferraris was the #57 of Kessel Racing, which finished fourth after being delated by a 10-second penalty dished out to them during the first hour of the race for an unsafe release.
Fifth place went to the pole sitting #72 TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage AMR GTE, which made a clean race but like all three Aston Martins in the class, struggled for pace in the second half of the race.
The final race of the 2023 season is set to get underway on Sunday at 13:00 local time. Qualifying will be held on Saturday evening at 17:20.
More to follow…
