Larbre boss says car was legal

Gabriele Gardel won the GT1 drivers' title after that fourth place finish, but it was thrown into doubt afterwards when he and Pedro Lamy were disqualified because there wasn't enough fuel left in the tank after the race.

However, Team Larbre appealed the decision, meaning it is not yet known who has won the championship.

Leconte reckons that the car had enough fuel in the car after the race and that his car had enough time to pit and still finish in fourth and win the championship if they had wanted to.

He told Autosprint: "According to our calculations we had over 3.5 litres, that's why we didn't top up towards the end. It wasn't an error: we had a 41-second advantage, and to drive through the pitlane we would have lost 27 seconds, plus five to refuel 15 litres.

"If there was a problem re-starting the engine, we would have risked finding ourselves behind the Scheider's MC12 with few laps left.

"The risk was too great, that's why I told Lamy to slow down a lot in the last lap while managing consumption, as it was more reasonable."