Portimao ELMS: United Autosports wins tactical battle after red flag

With three out of four titles yet to be decided and invitations to the Le Mans 24 Hours grid on the line, few were in doubt that the four hours of Portimao would prove critical to the teams contesting for the remaining honours and prizes.

After Cool Racing’s Charles Milesi converted his pole position into the lead and built a substantial gap over the chasing United Autosports, G-Drive Racing and Team WRT squads, the race was interrupted halfway through the first stint when Memo Rojas lost his left rear wheel while coming onto the main straight and spun his Duqueine Engineering ORECA wildly across the track.

Ligier LMP3 driver Andreas Laskaratos got caught up in the incident and, while trying to avoid Rojas and several other cars, hit the pitwall square on. This destroyed his 1 Aim Villorba Corse car and forced a red flag for a 30-minute track clear-up.

As the race progressed after the restart, United Autosports went off sequence with its pitstops, vaulting both British cars to first and second. Initially the G-Drive Racing Aurus squad was set to be its biggest rival until Franco Colapinto picked up a drive-through penalty for track limits infringements.

This left the Russian-flagged team out of contention for the win and brought the championship-winning Team WRT crew into the fight. The team, who had already won the ELMS title, followed a more conventional tyre strategy and led mid-race before falling back again as United’s strategy ensured Gamble jumped Louis Deletraz during the stops.

Deletraz tried to hunt down Gamble but the gap opened up to almost 20 seconds with the British driver conversing his tyre life to stretch out his stint to secure victory together with Aberdein and Hanson, United’s first ELMS win of the year.

Behind Deletraz, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye, third went to the Algarve Pro Racing car of Sophia Florsch, Richard Bradley and Ferdinand Habsburg that had fought back from a puncture.

#37 Cool Racing Oreca 07 - Gibson: Alexandre Coigny, Nicolas Lapierre, Charles Milesi

Photo by: ELMS

LMP2 Pro-Am went to the dominant Cool Racing team of Milesi, Nicolas Lapierre and Alexandre Coigny. The trio saw off championship leaders G-Drive Racing, but couldn’t do enough to take the title away from John Falb and Rui Andrade.

In LMP3, Team DKR’s Matthieu de Barbuat and Laurents Horr proved to be the class of the field after fending off the #2 United Autosports Ligier, but a penalty after the race for broken rear bodywork dropped it to fourth.

A drive-through penalty for the United drivers Wayne Boyd, Rob Wheldon and Edouard Cauhaupe gave championship contender Horr - who has previously been co-driven this season by Alain Berg and Andros Trophy ace Jean-Philippe Dayraut - even more breathing room in the fight with Cool Racing for the ELMS title and the Le Mans entry that comes with it.

The race went from bad to worse for Cool trio Niklas Krutten, Nicolas Maulini and Matt Bell as the team tried to fight back from a lowly grid position before a slow stop effectively ended the pre-event championship leaders' title-aspirations.

As United Autosports dropped back, Inter Europol Competition's Martin Hippe, Ugo De Wilde and Adam Eteki moved into second, with the Polish team showing great pace to keep the DKR Duqueine in sight. Horr and De Barbuat looked set to have secured the team's fourth consecutive win, until their penalty was enforced.

Second therefore went to United Autosports, finishing an uncharacteristic tough year without a race win.

Iron Lynx’s Rino Mastronardi, Miguel Molina and Matteo Cressoni dominated the final GTE race of the season, seeing off a spirited start from the Proton Competition Porsche to not only win their third race of the season but seal the title as well.

Second would go to the #93 Proton Competition Porsche of Felipe Laser, Michael Fassbender and Richard Lietz while Iron Lynx’s ‘Iron Dames’ Rahel Frey, Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting came in third.

ELMS - Portimao 4 Hours race results

Cla	#	Driver	Car	Laps	Time	Gap
1	22	Philip Hanson Jonathan Aberdein Tom Gamble	Oreca 07	130	4:00'00.433
2	41	Robert Kubica Louis Deletraz Ye Yifei	Oreca 07	130	4:00'22.181	21.748
3	24	Sophia Flörsch Ferdinand Habsburg Richard Bradley	Oreca 07	130	4:00'23.111	22.678
4	65	Julien Canal Will Stevens James Allen	Oreca 07	130	4:00'37.047	36.614
5	26	Roman Rusinov Franco Colapinto Nyck de Vries	Aurus 01	130	4:00'39.763	39.330
6	37	Alexandre Coigny Nicolas Lapierre Charles Milesi	Oreca 07	130	4:01'21.507	1'21.074
7	28	Paul Lafargue Paul-Loup Chatin Patrick Pilet	Oreca 07	129	4:00'12.002	1 Lap
8	25	John Falb Rui Andrade Gustavo Menezes	Aurus 01	129	4:00'14.037	1 Lap
9	35	Francesco Dracone Sergio Campana Markus Pommer	Oreca 07	128	4:00'27.699	2 Laps
10	32	Job Van Uitert Nico Jamin Manuel Maldonado	Oreca 07	128	4:00'47.043	2 Laps
11	29	Matthieu Lahaye Jean Baptiste Lahaye Gianluca Giraudi	Oreca 07	128	4:00'57.744	2 Laps
12	39	Vincent Capillaire Maxime Robin Arnold Robin	Oreca 07	127	4:00'08.097	3 Laps
13	4	Laurents Hörr Mathieu de	Duqueine M30 - D08	123	4:00'30.960	7 Laps
14	13	Martin Hippe Ugo De Adam Eteki	Ligier JS P320	123	4:00'43.949	7 Laps
15	2	Wayne Boyd Robert Wheldon Edouard Cauhaupe	Ligier JS P320	123	4:01'13.035	7 Laps
16	9	Matthias Kaiser Rory Penttinen	Ligier JS P320	123	4:01'23.171	7 Laps
17	42	Fabien Michal Lucas Legeret	Ligier JS P320	122	4:01'03.678	8 Laps
18	8	Eric Trouillet Sébastien Page David Droux	Ligier JS P320	122	4:01'06.509	8 Laps
19	11	Mattia Drudi Antoine Doquin Finn Gehrsitz	Ligier JS P320	122	4:01'16.295	8 Laps
20	14	Mateusz Kaprzyk Nicolas Pino Patryk Krupinski	Ligier JS P320	122	4:01'16.784	8 Laps
21	19	Nicolas Maulini Matthew Bell Niklas Krütten	Ligier JS P320	122	4:01'45.608	8 Laps
22	3	Jim McGuire Duncan Tappy Andrew Bentley	Ligier JS P320	121	4:00'12.054	9 Laps
23	20	Rob Hodes Alex Fontana	Ligier JS P320	121	4:00'20.071	9 Laps
24	6	Nick Adcock Austin McCusker Max Koebolt	Ligier JS P320	121	4:00'26.703	9 Laps
25	80	Matteo Cressoni Rino Mastronardi Miguel Molina	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	121	4:01'05.378	9 Laps
26	93	Michael Fassbender Felipe Fernández Laser Richard Lietz	Porsche 911 RSR - 19	121	4:01'22.362	9 Laps
27	83	Rahel Frey Sarah Bovy Michelle Gatting	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	120	4:00'03.689	10 Laps
28	55	Duncan Cameron Matthew Griffin David Perel	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	120	4:00'05.441	10 Laps
29	77	Christian Ried Cooper MacNeil Gianmaria Bruni	Porsche 911 RSR - 19	120	4:00'10.761	10 Laps
30	66	Rodrigo Sales Jody Fannin Thong Wei	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	120	4:00'35.318	10 Laps
31	95	John Hartshorne Ross Gunn Ollie Hancock	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	120	4:00'42.269	10 Laps
32	12	Gary Hauser Tom Cloet Guilherme Oliveira	Duqueine M30 - D08	120	4:00'43.453	10 Laps
33	60	Claudio Schiavoni Giorgio Sernagiotto Paolo Ruberti	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	120	4:01'23.293	10 Laps
34	61	Franck Dezoteux Pierre Ragues Côme Ledogar	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	120	4:01'24.596	10 Laps
35	88	François Perrodo Emmanuel Collard Alessio Rovera	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	120	4:01'27.604	10 Laps
36	7	Tony Wells Colin Noble Jr.	Ligier JS P320	109	4:00'51.377	21 Laps
	15	Mike Benham Alex Kapadia Malthe Jakobsen	Ligier JS P320	100	3:58'55.433	30 Laps
	5	Cresp Christophe Fabien Lavergne Adrien Chila	Ligier JS P320	98	3:18'29.217	32 Laps
	30	Tristan Gommendy Rene Binder Memo Rojas	Oreca 07	17	27'28.772	113 Laps
	18	Bressan Alessandro Andreas Laskaratos Damiano Fioravanti	Ligier JS P320	15	25'31.195	115 Laps
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