It was French victories in both LMP2 and LMP3 when the European Le Mans Series held its 4 hours race at Red Bull Ring today.
The race started quite dramatically when G-Drive Racing #38 had a collision with DragonSpeed #21 which gave the #38 a slow puncture and therefore an early pitstop. They fought back in style and was quickly back in top 3. They were however in troubles again later in the race, where they couldn’t avoid a spinning Pegasus Racing #29, and as a result, lost their head lamp and a fender. They still managed to battle through and get 3’rd position.
The car in Pole Position, Paniz Barthez Competition #23 was quickly into problems as well. First they got a drive-through penalty for incorrect starting procedure followed by a mechnical warning flag for missing headlight. And to finish it off, it collided with JMW Motorsport #66 an d got a warning for that incident.
Thiriet by Tds Racing #46 had some problems of its own, loosing its headlights due to vibrations over the curbs – not only once but twice during the race. However it wasn’t enough to deny them victory, that they took with an almost 1 minute margin to Eurasia Motorsport #33.
Photo Copyright 2016 Gabi Tomescu/AdrenalMedia.com
After about 2 hours of the race we saw a Full Course Yellow when Villoba Corse #7 in LMP3 getting stuck in the gravel. Later in the race we saw another FCY when Krohn Racing #40 with the team owner got stuck in the same gravel trap and needing a tow as well to get out of the stones.
JMW Motorsport #66 led the race through the first 1½ hours of the race, but then had a spin and lost their lead. They battled well back through the field again, and ended up taking the class win ahead of AF Corse #51 and AT Racing #56. There was loads of drama in GTE during the last hour, since Aston Martin Racing #99 was 2nd and got overtaken by #51 in a very robust fashion including contact before getting passed cleanly by the 56 later in the hour.
In LMP3 we saw Duqueine Engineering #19 crack the United Autosports #2 winning streak, and too the win ahead of that specific car. In 3rd place we saw 360 Racing #6.
UPDATE – #19 got a time penalty for not doing the minimum required pit stop time in LMP3. That promoted #2 to victory and moved #19 down to 2nd place.
The next time that ELMS is back on the track will be on August 28th when they visit Paul Ricard in the south of France.
