The Chinese sportscar protege targeting a path to the top with Porsche

"The perfect season minus one lap." That's how Yifei Ye sums up his maiden year of sportscar racing in 2021. The Chinese driver’s switch from single-seaters to endurance racing in the LMP2 ranks yielded a pair of titles, in the Asian and European Le Mans Series, but he missed out on victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours courtesy of that missing lap. Yet it was his performance in the big one prior to his WRT ORECA rolling to a halt out of the lead with just eight or so miles of the race to run that helped him to the prize that edged his season towards perfection.

Just days after its completion, 21-year-old Ye was announced as a Porsche driver. Not a full-factory driver, it should be pointed out; rather he is contracted to Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific. But the Chinese-based organisation has been very clear in an intent to do its utmost to give its new charge a shot at a seat in one of Porsche’s new LMDh prototypes that will race in both the World Endurance Championship and the IMSA SportsCar Championship from next year.

That explains why Ye’s primary programme in 2022 will not be at the wheel of one of the German manufacturer’s GT cars. Rather he will be aboard a ORECA-Gibson 07 P2 in the ELMS again, this time with the Swiss Cool Racing squad, starting this weekend at Paul Ricard.

Le Mans was central to Ye’s assent from single-seater refugee to would-be factory driver at the very pinnacle of sportscar racing. He’d already made his mark in the P2 arena by the time he pitched up at the 24 Hours last August after winning the two-weekend, four-race Asian series in February with the G-Drive Racing squad and notching up victories in the opening two ELMS rounds with WRT. But what followed at the big one at Le Mans thrust him into the limelight.

Ye was the star rookie in P2 courtesy of a performance that stood comparison with that of any of his more experienced rivals in an ultra-competitive field. It didn’t really matter that he and team-mates Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz lost victory on that fateful final lap when the engine cut out. The late drama only turned up the brightness on the light that shone on the Chinese driver’s speed and consistency over the previous 23 hours and 56 minutes.

Yifei Ye came agonisingly close to a class win on debut at last year's Le Mans 24 Hours

Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt

“Le Mans, I think, was the most important moment of the year for me,” says Ye. “It could have been the icing on the cake, but what was important had already been shown before that. As a new guy at Le Mans that race was special. It definitely helped me move forward towards my goal of driving with a manufacturer in the Hypercar category.”

Ye was right at the sharp end of the averages over the course of the race: he was in the top-three quickest P2 drivers on whatever sample you care to choose. Not bad for a sportscar rookie racing on the daunting 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe for the first time.

Talk to Ye about his maiden Le Mans assault last year, and he sounds like a seasoned pro with any number of campaigns in the sportscar blue riband under his belt.

“It isn’t like a typical racing circuit,” says Ye, whose P2 performances last year also earned him a nomination for rookie of the year at the Autosport Awards. “You have to be very careful where you put the car, because there are places where if you go there’s a good chance you won’t come back. There are points on the track where there isn’t any gravel or run-off.

“I wasn’t 100% confident at the beginning, but after a couple of laps, I was really quite into it and enjoying what the car could do, especially in the high-speed corners. Sometimes when you are overtaking cars in high-speed corners, going around the outside of a GT, it feels a bit like a video game” Yifei Ye

“There are so many factors to concentrate on. The tyres and the brakes cool down on the long straights. You have to learn how to manage the traffic, there’s so much other stuff to learn and master next to being able to do a quick lap.”

Ye admits to some trepidation after venturing out onto the circuit for the first time, but quickly came to enjoy the challenge.

“I wasn’t 100% confident at the beginning, but after a couple of laps, I was really quite into it and enjoying what the car could do, especially in the high-speed corners,” he explains. “It’s fun to push in those places with the downforce we have. I had a really special feeling at night. Sometimes when you are overtaking cars in high-speed corners, going around the outside of a GT, it feels a bit like a video game.”

Ye had made an immediate impression at the wheel of a P2 car in the Asian series six months before Le Mans. He had never so much as tested the Algarve Pro-run G-Drive ORECA he shared with Ferdinand Habsburg and Rene Binder in the rearranged Asian series in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but was immediately on the pace in official testing ahead of the first of the pair of double-header weekends. He went quicker than either of his team-mates on his second flying lap.

Despite Team WRT's Le Mans 24 Hours heartache, the team still stormed to the 2021 ELMS title

Photo by: ELMS

“I remember being a big frightened on my out-lap: I didn’t know anything about the ORECA and there were LMP2, LMP3 and GT cars everywhere,” he recalls. “The multi-class environment was new to me and in an LMP2 car your vision is quite restricted. But after a few corners driving instinct kicked in.”

The Asian LMS assault followed Ye putting his single-seater aspirations on hold after a successful campaign in the Euroformula Open Championship in 2020. He calls it a “regroup season” after a disappointing graduation from Formula Renault 2.0 to the FIA Formula 3 Championship with Hitech yielded little in the way of results the year before. He points to the quick-fire nature of the FIA F3 weekends and strict limits on testing as being “bad for driver development”.

“The move to Euroformula was what I needed; I needed more driving time in a high-downforce, high-grip car,” he explains. “A lack of experience hurt me in F3. I didn’t really have the time to get the car to my liking.”

Ye won the Euroformula title at a canter with the Motopark-run CryptoTower Racing squad, claiming victory in 11 of the 18 races, and scoring another four podiums to boot. A return to FIA F3 was never on the cards; he was looking to Formula 2 after his championship success.

“F2 would have been the logical next step, but there wasn’t enough sponsorship or support to go with a top team,” says Ye. “I saw the upcoming golden age in endurance racing with multiple manufacturers and thought I should give it a try. We thought about the Asian series knowing that it wouldn’t be too late to change back to single-seaters.”

That never happened partly because the support Ye needed to graduate to F2 didn’t materialise and because he became a commodity in sportscar racing. He remained silver-graded under the FIA’s system of driver categorisation despite winning the title in Euroformula Open - the series is not specifically named in the ranking regulations. That smoothed his path into the WRT’s ELMS line-up alongside Kubica and Deletraz as the mandatory silver.

“Thanks to what happened in the Asian series, I got a call from Vincent [Vosse, WRT team boss],” explains Ye. “We were already talking to different people, but we were able to find a common goal with WRT.”

Ye certainly wasn’t ignorant of sportscar racing heading into last season. He lived in Le Mans when he joined the FFSA Academy as a 14-year-old exchange student at the end of his karting career and stayed for five years on his move into single-seaters in the French Formula 4 Championship and through his graduation to Formula Renault 2.0 in 2017. He was also present in the paddock at the 24 Hours in 2016 when friend Neel Jani, a former sparring partner of Ye's manager Congfu ‘Franky’ Cheng from the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, triumphed outright with Porsche.

Ye made his first outing of 2022 as a Porsche-supported driver in the Asian Le Mans Series

Photo by: Asian Le Mans Series

Ye had his first taste of racing for his new employer in the Asian LMS in February. In February, he turned out in a Porsche 911 GT3-R run by the Herberth Motorsport squad in a series that retained its 2021 format, notching up a podium in the final race at Abu Dhabi alongside Klaus Bachler and Hong Kong-based amateur Antares Au.

There may be the odd appearance at the wheel of GT machinery to come this year for Ye, but the main focus of his season will be the ELMS, now as a gold-ranked driver after his 2021 successes, alongside Cool boss Nicolas Lapierre and Niklas Krutten. PMAP has made it very clear that 2022 is all about putting its new charge in the sights of the people in charge at motorsport headquarters in Germany and the new Porsche Penske Motorsport entity that will run the both the WEC and the IMSA programmes with the as-yet-unnamed LMDh.

Ye seems unconcerned that there will be pressure on his shoulders with the carrot of a Porsche LMDh ride dangling in front of him.

“With the job I did last year, there will be more people watching me with or without Porsche,” he says. “I’ve always put pressure on myself. My job this year is to keep developing myself, not just to drive better but also to improve things like the way I work with a team, and to keep the knife sharp if the opportunity with Porsche comes.”

There will also be an attempt to make amends for the victory that got away at Le Mans last year. Two-time IMSA champion Ricky Taylor will come into the line-up because Lapierre is on duty in Alpine’s old LMP1 car in the Hypercar class.

"My job this year is to keep developing myself, not just to drive better but also to improve things like the way I work with a team, and to keep the knife sharp if the opportunity with Porsche comes" Yifei Ye

The reasons why the engine cut on Ye as he powered out of the Dunlop Chicane starting the final lap last year will probably never be fully understood. The assumption in the immediate aftermath of the event was that a leaking drinks bottle had caused the engine management system to short circuit, because in parc ferme the day after the race, WRT was able to fire up the ORECA on the button. A report from ECU supplier Cosworth proved inconclusive, however.

The overriding emotion Ye felt as the Gibson engine in his ORECA stopped was one of shock. “I wasn’t really annoyed and I didn’t break down,” he recalls. “I was, let’s say, speechless. After I took over the car with about 100 minutes left, I started to back off a bit, avoiding the kerbs and changing gear early. I had a lot of time to think about what I was going to do after winning.

"When I started the final lap I thought, finally this is over. Then out of the Dunlop Chicane suddenly, without warning, the car lost all power."

That robbed Ye of a perfect maiden season of sportscar racing. But he did get to complete the missing, final lap of Le Mans — on the back of a flat-bed while still strapped in the car.

Ye is ready for another ELMS title assault, this time with Nicolas Lapierre and Niklas Krutten at Cool Racing

Photo by: Cool Racing