Petit Le Mans: WTR wins after leaders clash in final stint

Prototype

Alexander Rossi in the Acura ARX-05 snatched the lead from Felipe Nasr’s Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R with 1hr42min to go but Nasr held on, hung tough, repassed for a split second at Turn 10B and went slightly long, allowing Rossi back ahead.

Meanwhile when Dixon handed over the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac to Ryan Briscoe, the full-timer dropped it at Turn 10 which dropped him 25sec behind the lead battle.

With 74mins to go, Nasr pitted to hand over to Derani, while Rossi stopped one lap later and left the wheel for Taylor. The pair emerged just 1.2sec apart, and Derani used his warmer tires to make the outside pass at Turn 10A and made it stick.

However, these two remained within a second, regularly jockeying for position, especially in the Turn 10 brake zone, the Cadillac appearing stronger through the curves, and the Acura stronger in a straight line. Meanwhile, van der Zande was chipping away at the pair of them…

Taylor followed Derani into the pits for his final stop and with one lap’s worth less fuel to put in – having previously stopped a lap later – the Team Penske team sent Taylor out ahead. However, Derani was in no mood to settle for second and into Turn 1 two laps later, the AXR Cadillac dived down the inside and grabbed P1.

Again, the pair stayed tied together though and with 10mins to go, Taylor dived down the inside of the AXR machine at Turn 6, didn’t look far enough alongside and the pair collided. The #31 AXR car was fired off into the gravel, allowing the closing van der Zande to move the WTR Cadillac into the lead. Taylor resumed in second, with Acura teammate Dane Cameron – who had had a separate ‘off’ moments earlier – taking third.

Tristan Vautier brought the JDC Miller MotorSports Cadillac home fourth, with AXR classified fifth and last of the cars that had been on the lead lap.

Unbelievably, in the final hour Simon Trummer had to pit and go behind the wall with the PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca after dominating the whole race. Mikkel Jensen thus ran unopposed to the checkered flag in the Tower Motorsports by Starworks machine.

GT Le Mans

Porsche finally scored its first GT Le Mans victory of the season courtesy of Frederic Makowiecki, Nick Tandy and Matt Campbell in the #911 car.

Augusto Farfus had held a 10-second lead before his final stop, but with less than 40mins to go, the lead BMW M8 was punted onto the grass at the final turn by a Prototype, and had to do a slow lap with his radiator full of grass debris and his left-front brake rotor on fire, obliging him to stop again to have the foreign matter removed.

That moved Makowiecki’s Porsche 911 RSR into the lead, 3.5sec ahead of Antonio Garcia's Corvette, with Laurens Vanthoor 7sec further back in the #912 Porsche. Farfus was right behind the second 911 however, and had Tommy Milner in the #4 Corvette right behind.

When the penultimate restart came with 7mins to go, Vanthoor collided with a GTD Lexus and went spinning off the track and into the wall.

So BMW got a consolation prize of a podium finish, and Milner, wrestling with a Corvette damaged much earlier in the race, came home fourth.

GT Daytona

Scuderia Corsa’s WeatherTech Ferrari 488 shared by Cooper MacNeil, Alessandro Balzan and Jeff Westphal took GT Daytona honors, as Westphal held on ahead of the AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F of Jack Hawksworth through the final stint.

The #12 Lexus, with Townsend Bell at the wheel, had a tough final stint, clinging onto third ahead of the GRT Magnus Lamborghini Huracan of Andy Lally until Lally took advantage of the Prototype leaders coming through.

Bell’s disappointment got worse yet. Six seconds further back, Jan Heylen in the Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R – who had an odd couple of very slow laps in the middle of the stint – passed Trent Hindman’s Heinricher Racing MSR Acura NSX, with Dennis Olsen in the Pfaff Motorsports Porsche following Heylen through.

But these Porsches caught up with and demoted Bell and then the #12 Lexus was fired into the wall by Vanthoor. That promoted Hindman into sixth, ahead of Bryan Sellers in the Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini.

Race results:

Cla	Class	Num	Driver	Chassis	Laps	Gap
1	DPi	10	Renger van der Zande Ryan Briscoe Scott Dixon	Cadillac DPi	460
2	DPi	7	Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor Alexander Rossi	Acura DPi	460	0.429
3	DPi	6	Juan Pablo Montoya Dane Cameron Simon Pagenaud	Acura DPi	460	1.236
4	DPi	5	Sébastien Bourdais Tristan Vautier Loic Duval	Cadillac DPi	460	3.700
5	DPi	31	Felipe Nasr Pipo Derani Filipe Albuquerque	Cadillac DPi	458
6	LMP2	8	John Farano Mikkel Jensen Job Van Uitert	ORECA LMP2 07	450
7	LMP2	38	James McGuire Matthew Bell Colin Braun	ORECA LMP2 07	445
8	DPi	55	Jonathan Bomarito Harry Tincknell Ryan Hunter-Reay	Mazda DPi	441
9	LMP2	51	Austin McCusker Jakub Smiechowski Rob Hodes	ORECA LMP2 07	441
10	GTLM	911	Nick Tandy Frédéric Makowiecki Matt Campbell	Porsche 911 RSR - 19	431
11	GTLM	3	Antonio Garcia Jordan Taylor Nick Catsburg	Corvette C8.R	431
12	GTLM	24	Jesse Krohn John Edwards Augusto Farfus	BMW M8 GTE	431
13	GTLM	4	Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner Marcel Fassler	Corvette C8.R	431
14	GTLM	912	Earl Bamber Laurens Vanthoor Mathieu Jaminet	Porsche 911 RSR - 19	429
15	DPi	77	Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez Olivier Pla	Mazda DPi	427
16	LMP2	52	Patrick Kelly Simon Trummer Scott Huffaker	ORECA LMP2 07	418
17	GTD	63	Cooper MacNeil Alessandro Balzan Jeff Westphal	Ferrari 488 GT3	413
18	GTD	14	Jack Hawksworth Aaron Telitz Michael de Quesada	Lexus RC F GT3	413
19	GTD	44	Andy Lally John Potter Spencer Pumpelly	Lamborghini Huracan GT3	413
20	GTD	16	Ryan Hardwick Patrick Long Jan Heylen	Porsche 911 GT3 R	413
21	GTD	9	Dennis Olsen Zacharie Robichon Lars Kern	Porsche 911 GT3 R	413
22	GTD	57	Alvaro Parente Mikhail Goikhberg Trent Hindman	Acura NSX GT3	413
23	GTD	48	Bryan Sellers Madison Snow Corey Lewis	Lamborghini Huracan GT3	413
24	GTD	12	Frankie Montecalvo Townsend Bell Kyle Kirkwood	Lexus RC F GT3	410
25	GTD	96	Bill Auberlen Robby Foley Dillon Machavern	BMW M6 GT3	408
26	DPi	85	Chris Miller Matheus Leist Gabriel Aubry	Cadillac DPi	406
27	GTLM	25	Bruno Spengler Connor de Phillippi Colton Herta	BMW M8 GTE	399
28	GTD	86	Mario Farnbacher Matt McMurry Shinya Michimi	Acura NSX GT3	399
29	GTD	23	Ian James Roman De Angelis Darren Turner	Aston Martin Vantage GT3	297
30	GTD	74	Gar Robinson Lawson Aschenbach Ben Keating	Mercedes-AMG GT3	268
31	GTD	30	Rob Ferriol Markus Winkelhock Andrew Davis	Audi R8 LMS GT3	258
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