UPDATE: There were a number of penalties applied to the final classification post race.
One of them saw the podium positions change in GT, with the #74 Kessel Ferrari losing third to a five-second stop-go converted to a time penalty.
This dropped the car to sixth in class and promoted the #92 Manthey Porsche to third.
The final result can be found below.
French-flagged RD Limited claimed a stunning victory on its LMP2 debut this afternoon in the opening race of the 2024/25 Asian Le Mans Series season in Sepang. The team’s #30 ORECA of Fred Poordad, James Allen and Tristan Vautier powered to the win in the second half, surviving a late duel with AF Corse en route to the chequered flag.
The Romain Dumas-owned team’s perfect start to life in P2 racing came off the back of a superb run in the third hour from Allen, which saw him battle past Matthieu Vaxiviere for the lead before a metronomic run to the flag by Vautier to seal it.
It was a calm, collected performance from Vautier in what quickly became a nail-biting finale, which saw the battle for the lead go down to the wire. Behind, Vaxiviere came achingly close to snatching the win from the RD crew but was forced to settle for second. Nevertheless, his drive in the #83 AF Corse ORECA places himself, Francois Perrodo and Alessio Rovera immediately into the title battle.
Vaxiviere pushed himself to the limit in the closing laps to catch Vautier and made a bold move at the penultimate turn on the final lap to retake the lead. But he couldn’t make it stick, running too deep into the final hairpin moments later, allowing Vautier to power past, setting up a drag race to the finish line.
“Hats off to the team, it’s their first race and some of the mechanics had never done a pit stop, and they had the fastest times. In the end, it was a great battle, it was fair. We will remember that for a long time,” Vautier said.
Allen added: “It felt good, we knew the deg would be bad, so we looked after the tyres and after the second safety car it put us in a great spot to chip away at it. It was amazing.”
FIA WEC LMGT3 championship-winning team Pure Rxcing, another outfit which impressed on its LMP2 debut (with TF Sport), ended up completing the podium. Alex Malykhin, Harry King and Louis Deletraz, despite losing around 20 seconds mid-way through the race on pit lane while leading, managed to recover to third.
All three of Pure Rxcing’s drivers were impressive. Malykhin kept it clean in his first LMP2 start before handing it over to King – who also looked right at home in his new surroundings – and later Deletraz, who completed the recovery drive in the final hour.
The time was lost when King came in from the lead for his first stop and was blocked while trying to turn into his pit box by the #16 Winward Racing Mercedes.
“It looked like the Mercedes was carrying damage, we boxed at the same time, it didn’t make its box properly, so we got blocked in and tucked up behind with nowhere to go,” TF Sport’s Tom Ferrier, who is running the Pure Rxcing effort over the winter, said.
Off the podium, the #25 Algarve Pro Racing ORECA took fourth while the Nielsen Racing 07 Gibson took fifth. The Nielsen team, which looked like a podium contender early in the race, benefitted from a late-race drive-through for the #3 DKR Engineering crew which dropped it to seventh behind the sister #20 APR ORECA.
LMP3 went down to the wire too, with Ultimate narrowly beating High Class Racing to the flag. Anders Fjordbach was the chaser in the Danish-flagged Ligier, reeling in Matteo Quintarelli in the closing stages. But like Vaxiviere further up the timing screen, Fjordbach also couldn’t find a way to make a move.
He crossed the line 2.5 seconds behind Ultimate’s AF Corse-operated JS P320 after closing in to within a second in the final 10 minutes. GRAFF Racing meanwhile, completed the top three with its Ligier.
In GT, Car Guy headlined a 1-2-3 for the Ferrari 296 GT3. It was a dream run for the Kessel Racing-run car, which was in contention for the win throughout with its trio of Yudai Uchida, Esteban Masson and Daniel Serra.
After a number of lead changes throughout the race, the final position change for Car Guy’s Ferrari came with under 20 minutes remaining when the #51 AF Corse Ferrari had an off at the final corner before its last stop. Custodio Toledo, Cedric Sbirrazzouli and Riccardo Agostini would eventually drop to second.
“My engineer was giving me the gap to the 51 in my stint, but I was just taking care of the tyres in the head. In the end, though we did an amazing job, it’s time to celebrate,” Serra said.
Kessel Racing’s sister car took third despite dropping from the lead to 17th at the end of the second hour thanks to a drive-through. It was dealt out by race control shortly after Ben Tuck completed a head-turning move for the lead round the outside of the #28 AF Corse Ferrari, which eventually came home fifth.
Manthey’s #92 Porsche broke up the parade of Ferraris in the running order, taking fourth after a titanic battle between Richard Lietz and Dennis Marshall for third in the closing laps.
Round 1 of the 2024/25 season was really a race of two halves. The first was frustrating, interrupted by four safety car periods caused by a steady stream of incidents, the second ran almost entirely green and showcased the best the series’ format has to offer.
The #23 Absolute Racing Ferrari became the first retirement just five minutes in. An overly ambitious move at Turn 1 from Uchida in the #57 Car Guy Ferrari up the inside turned Gregory Bennett into a spin at the apex.
Bennett then took damage as the #74 Kessel Ferrari brushed his rear, tearing the wing off the car, before the delayed #43 Inter Europol Ligier of Steve Brooks then hit him head-on. Brooks was unlucky, blindsided by a GT car ahead at turn-in.
“We had a good start, got up to about eighth. But was a lot shorter of a stint than I was planning for, I expected two hours. The Ferrari is pretty resilient, so it’s not so bad, I just feel bad because the team did so much work to get here today,” Bennett said upon returning to pit lane.
That was the first of a series of incidents during the first half of the race. The biggest of them saw more contact for Steve Brooks, this time at the final hairpin.
Shortly after a safety car restart for Inter Europol’s sister #34 Ligier taking damage with Tim Creswick aboard, Brooks was too late on the brakes, locking up and clouting both the #10 Manthey Porsche of Antares Au and #16 Winward Mercedes of Sergey Stolyarov at the corner entry. The impact forced both the Ligier and Porsche into retirement on the spot.
“It looks like door damage, but I fear it’s a chassis,” Au explained to the broadcast.
Thankfully, once the race reached its two-hour mark, it came alive and delivered a memorable season opener, setting up what promises to be another action-packed encounter in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow.
The lights are set to go out for round two at 14:00 local time in Malaysia.
Image courtesy of Asian Le Mans Series
