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.

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