Monza ELMS: Vergne leads G-Drive to victory
Jean-Eric Vergne, Andrea Pizzitola and Roman Rusinov took their second victory in a week for G-Drive Racing at the second round of the European Le Mans Series at Monza.
#26 G-Drive Racing Oreca 07 - Gibson: Roman Rusinov, Andrea Pizzitola, Jean Eric Vergne
ELMS
Following their 6 Hours of Spa victory in the World Endurance Championship last weekend, the TDS-run Oreca finished 29.8 seconds ahead of the sister #33 car of Loic Duval, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Francois Perrodo after a race interrupted by four safety car periods.
Rusinov ran second in the early laps behind Dragonspeed’s Nicolas Lapierre, until the Frenchman pitted under the first Safety Car, caused when Alexandre Cougnaud crashed his Graff Racing Oreca at the second Lesmo.
Rusinov continued to lead while the Dragonspeed Oreca was delayed by a drive-through penalty for Henrik Hedman punting one of the YMR LMP3s into a spin at Ascari, and held onto the lead after the second intervention of the safety car, when Enzo Guibbert crashed the second Graff car at Ascari.
Pizzitola then took over at the front from Nelson Panciatici’s Duqueine Engineering Oreca, but had a scare after the fourth safety car when the two United Autosport Ligiers of Phil Hanson and Will Owen – which had both stayed out – were mistakenly waved past the safety car.
The error was spotted by race control and Pizzitola made swift work of getting back to the lead, handing over to Vergne for a comfortable victory.
Vaxiviere had set the fastest lap in qualifying, but was ordered to start from the back of the grid after TDS Racing failed the technical inspection. He just held off the #29 IDEC Sport Oreca of Paul-Loup Chatin, who had charged through from ninth after taking over from Memo Rojas and Paul Lafargue.
The succession of mid-race cautions helped Dragonspeed to negate its early time loss and recover to fourth, with Ben Hanley taking advantage of a late fuel stops for Felipe Nasr (Villorba Corse Dallara) and Filipe Albuquerque’s United Autosport entry, which ended up ninth and tenth.
The round-one winning Racing Engineering Oreca of Olivier Pla, Norman Nato and Paul Petit followed Dragonspeed’s early-stopping strategy and finished fifth.
EuroInternational inherits LMP3 win from United
United Autosports pair Sean Rayhall and Jon Falb had been set for victory in LMP3 until a right-rear puncture struck with 10 minutes to go, allowing Giorgio Mondini and Kay van Berlow to capitalise for EuroInternational.
Falb had jumped ahead of Van Berlow at the final round of pitstops and left Van Berlow to defend from Inter Europol Competition’s Martin Hippe when the puncture stuck. Victory for EuroInternational was confirmed when Hippe had to stop for fuel with one lap to go.
Ferrari takes GTE honours
The #51 Spirit of Race Ferrari 488 GTE of Matt Griffin, Aaron Scott and Duncan Cameron bounced back from a DNF at Paul Ricard to win on the team’s home turf.
Cameron profited from the flurry of cautions to lead by over a minute from the cluster of chasing Porsches, headed by the #77 Proton Competition example of Marc Lieb, Marvin Dienst and Christian Ried.
The sister #88 featuring Gianmaria Bruni had occupied second position until a drive-through penalty for Gianluca Roda tipping the #20 Racing for Poland LMP3 car into the gravel at Ascari demoted it to fourth, behind the pole-sitting Ebimotors Porsche of Ricardo Pera, Fabio Babini and Raymond Narac.
European Le Mans 2018 Monza
Cla | # | Driver | Car | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 26 | Jean-Eric Vergne Roman Rusinov Andrea Pizzitola |
Oreca 07 | |
2 | 33 | Loic Duval François Perrodo Matthieu Vaxiviere |
Oreca 07 | 29.828 |
3 | 28 | Paul-Loup Chatin Memo Rojas Paul Lafargue |
Oreca 07 | 31.936 |
4 | 21 | Nicolas Lapierre Henrik Hedman Ben Hanley |
Oreca 07 | 48.707 |
5 | 24 | Olivier Pla Paul Petit Norman Nato |
Oreca 07 | 1'23.545 |
6 | 29 | Nelson Panciatici Pierre Ragues Nico Jamin |
Oreca 07 | 1'25.795 |
7 | 31 | Gustavo Menezes Harrison Newey Ryan Cullen |
Oreca 07 | 1'27.050 |
8 | 23 | Will Stevens Julien Canal Timothé Buret |
Ligier JSP217 | 1'39.007 |
9 | 47 | Roberto Lacorte Giorgio Sernagiotto Felipe Nasr |
Dallara P217 | 1 lap |
10 | 22 | Filipe Albuquerque Philip Hanson |
Ligier JSP217 | 1 lap |
11 | 32 | Wayne Boyd William Owen Hugo De Sadeleer |
Ligier JSP217 | 1 lap |
12 | 27 | Erik Maris Patrice Lafargue William Cavailhes |
Ligier JSP217 | 4 laps |
13 | 25 | Mark Patterson Tacksung Kim Ate de Jong |
Ligier JSP217 | 4 laps |
14 | 11 | Giorgio Mondini Kay van Berlo |
Ligier JS P3 | 6 laps |
15 | 6 | Terrence Woodward Ross Kaiser James Swift |
Ligier JS P3 | 7 laps |
16 | 3 | Matthew Bell Tony Wells Garret Grist |
Ligier JS P3 | 7 laps |
17 | 13 | Jakub Smiechowski Martin Hippe |
Ligier JS P3 | 7 laps |
18 | 2 | Sean Rayhall John Falb |
Ligier JS P3 | 7 laps |
19 | 5 | Timur Boguslavskiy Alexey Chuklin Daniil Pronenko |
Ligier JS P3 | 7 laps |
20 | 17 | Jean Baptiste Lahaye Matthieu Lahaye François Heriau |
Norma M 30 | 8 laps |
21 | 55 | Duncan Cameron Matt Griffin Aaron Scott |
Ferrari F488 GTE | 8 laps |
22 | 10 | Clément Mateu Andres Mendez Riccardo Ponzio |
Norma M 30 | 8 laps |
23 | 7 | Alex Kapadia Colin Noble Christian Stubbe Olsen |
Ligier JS P3 | 8 laps |
24 | 4 | Antonin Borga Alexandre Coigny Iradj Alexander-David |
Ligier JS P3 | 8 laps |
25 | 77 | Marc Lieb Christian Ried Marvin Dienst |
Porsche 911 RSR | 8 laps |
26 | 80 | Fabio Babini Raymond Narac Riccardo Pera |
Porsche 911 RSR | 8 laps |
27 | 15 | John Farano Robert Garofall Job Van Uitert |
Ligier JS P3 | 9 laps |
28 | 16 | Francesco Dracone Jacopo Baratto |
Ligier JS P3 | 9 laps |
29 | 66 | Alex MacDowall Liam Griffin Miguel Molina |
Ferrari F488 GTE | 9 laps |
30 | 88 | Gianmaria Bruni Gianluca Roda Giorgio Roda |
Porsche 911 RSR | 9 laps |
31 | 83 | Andrea Bertolini Tracy Krohn Nic Jönsson |
Ferrari F488 GTE | 10 laps |
32 | 19 | David Droux Lucas Legeret Nicolas Ferrer |
Norma M 30 | 11 laps |
33 | 20 | Alex Fontana Henning Enqvist Tomasz Blicharski |
Ligier JS P3 | 13 laps |
34 | 49 | Anders Fjordbach Dennis Andersen |
Dallara P217 | 20 laps |
35 | 14 | Paul Scheuschner Hendrik Still Luca Demarchi |
Ligier JS P3 | 20 laps |
35 | Viktor Shaytar Matevos Isaakyan Egor Orudzhev |
Dallara P217 | 62 laps | |
30 | Konstantin Tereshchenko Henrique Chaves |
Dallara P217 | 63 laps | |
18 | Laurent Millara Natan Bihel |
Ligier JS P3 | 67 laps | |
9 | Alexander Talkanitsa Sr. Alexander Talkanitsa Jr. Mikkel Jensen |
Ligier JS P3 | 68 laps | |
8 | Miguel Toril Alexander Toril Jean Glorieux |
Norma M 30 | 78 laps | |
40 | Jose Gutierrez Enzo Guibbert James Allen |
Oreca 07 | 105 laps | |
39 | Tristan Gommendy Jonathan Hirschi Alexandre Cougnaud |
Oreca 07 | 117 laps |
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