After another 4 hours of great racing, it was the Thiriet by TDS Oreca 05 who grabbed the win in Imola's ELMS race last weekend.
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| © ELMS - John Rourke/Adrenal Media |
Harry Tincknell, behind the wheel of
the #38 Jota Sport managed a comfortable 18 second lead after half an
hour of racing. Behind him, the battle for 2nd to 5th
was fierce with Mark Patterson in the Murphy prototype defending his
second place with a charging Roussel (Pegasus) and Windheim (Greaves)
behind him and Pierre Thiriet joining in after 8 laps. Thiriet
started the race in 9th place after an off in qualifying,
but his Oreca-Nissan showed outright speed and charged through the
pack to the battle for second place.
The first safety car was deployed on
lap 19 after Henry Hassid visited the gravel trap at Villeneuve
chicane with his Marc VDS BMW Z4. This ment Tincknell's lead was
gone by the restart, but he managed to build up a new gap to the by
then second placed Oreca 05 of Thiriet by the first pitstops. Lap 60
saw a second safety car on track after the #5 Villorba Corse Ginetta
parked himself at the entrance of the pitlane. In the meantime Simon
Dolan took over the Jota from Tincknell but had to come in again with
a damaged front left wing, after attacking the curbs too hard while
navigating through slower traffic. After the safety car period, the
Thiriet Oreca, now driven by Ludovic Badey, was leading with the
Murphy LMP2 second and Hirsch in the Greaves Motorsport Gibson on
third place, despite a spin at the end of the safety car period.
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| © TDS Racing |
Badey and Hirsch battled out for the
lead but Hirsch lost some time while overtaking the #29 Pegasus,
after which Badey managed to build up a comfortable lead. Gommendy controlled the race afterwards and brought Thiriet by TDS and the Oreca 05 its maiden win. The Murphy
LMP2 finished second after a strong team effort with 63 year old
Patterson in the opening stint, a double stint from Michael Lyons and
a strong finish of Nathanael Berthon. Jota came in third, despite a
late pitstop at the very end of the race and a 95 second penalty after an
irregular pitstop. Jon Lancaster placed the Greaves' Gibson on 4th
place, ahead of Krohn Racings Ligier-Judd. The SMP BR01
prototypes ran at the back of the LMP2 field, collecting data for the
Le Mans debut with the #37 car finishing in 8th place and
the #27 having to retire in the final hour of the race with a fuel
leak.
In the LMP3 class, the #7 University of
Bolton Ginetta took the honours with a comfortable 2 lap lead over
the competition. Charlie Robertson took pole in his LNT-Ginetta and
built up a comfortable lead in the early stages of the race but a
penalty and technical issues saw him falling back into the order.
The SVK by Speed Factory Ginetta took the lead for a brief time but
had to settle with second place, holding off the #23 Lanan car.
The GTE class brought some thrilling
racing with the top 4 cars only separated by seconds in the last 2
hours of the race. After 4 hours, the #56 AT Racing Ferrari took the
chequered flag ahead of the #88 Proton Porsche 911 and the #60
Formula racing Ferrari. Despite dropping down the field at the start
after an unfortunate spin, Allessandro Pier Guidi managed to hold off
the competition at the chequered flag, with just seconds dividing the
top 4 in class.
AF Corse dominated GTC with a clean
sweep on the podium. Stuart Hall took the win in the #62 Ferrari
ahead of #63 and #64. Massive Motorsports Aston Martin was quickly
out of contention, so the AF Corse Ferrari's only had the TDS Racings
BMW Z4 challenging them. Unfortunately the BMW lacked outright
speed, so the Ferrari's could battle it out for the podium.
11 ELMS teams now head on the Le Mans for the 24 hours, the next ELMS race is at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria on July 12th.
