G-Drive Aurus Dominates At Barcelona

G-Drive Racing scored a second consecutive ELMS win with its Aurus 01 Gibson tonight at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with a dominant performance from Roman Rusinov, Job van Uitert and Jean-Eric Vergne.

The team took the lead early in the race when it opted to double-stint its Dunlop tyres while the cars in front changed their rubber and spent longer in the pits at the opening round of stops.

From there the Russian team led the way, Rusinov able to manage the tyre wear during his stint to start the race, before van Uitert and Vergne combined to control the second half and extend their lead in the championship with another victory. In the end Vergne finished a lap ahead of the Michelin-shod #39 GRAFF ORECA.

“It’s a couple of good weekends I’m very happy,” said recently-crowned double Formula E champion Vergne. “There was not a single mistake from my teammates. It was a straight forward race for me, but I had fun pushing.”

Behind the Aurus, it was a thrilling race for the remaining podium spots.

Richard Bradley in the #30 Duqueine 07 and Tristan Gommendy in the #49 GRAFF example were involved in a titanic tussle in the closing laps of the race in total darkness, which came to an end after Gommendy made a move stick and snatched second place for GRAFF. Bradley then dropped like a stone and lost third on the final lap of the race, after Antonin Borga muscled past in the Cool Racing ORECA.

Borga’s persistence at the end rewarded the Swiss-flagged team, which is new to LMP2 this year and looked good for a podium throughout, climbing as high as second during the race when Nicolas Lapierre was aboard.

Behind the Duqueine ORECA, fifth place was taken the pole-sitting IDEC Sport ORECA, which had to make an extra stop during the race and faded away on pace after looking like a podium contender early on.

LMP3 was a topsy-turvy race for most of the front-runners, the order in the top five changing frequently throughout. When the checkered flag came out, it was Inter Europol out front, taking its first win of the season, after a dramatic finish.

Nigel Moore held onto the lead in the team’s #13 JS P3, but had to come in to serve a drive-through for a collision with the #10 Oregon Team Norma, which dropped him to third. This forced him to have to fight his way back past the two United Autosports Ligiers to retake the lead and secure the Polish team its first win since the season finale last year.

“It was a really good race. We’ve struggled all weekend, we hadn’t got the speed of the other Ligiers or Normas. But need needed consistency, and that’s what we had. We went for it, and in the traffic we were strong,” said Moore.

Behind the #17 Ultimate Norma stormed to second in the closing minutes. Mathieu Lahaye’s efforts at the end capped off a remarkable drive through the field for the French team which had a poor start and dropped to dead last on the opening lap.

United Autosports’ #3 Ligier took third, Thomas Erdos’ pace strong enough to hold off a late charge from the #7 Nielsen Racing Norma of Colin Noble, which climbed to fourth on the final lap.

In GTE, Luzich Racing took a comfortable win and the class points lead, after Alessandro Pier Guidi, Nicklas Nielsen and Fabien Lavergne finished over half a minute clear of the rest of the field. The team’s Ferrari 488 GTE was untouchable after the #60 Kessel Ferrari’s challenge faded due to multiple incidents for Sergio Pianezzola during his stint.

“We did a very good job working together. We worked hard to get race pace sorted here. We knew tyre degradation would be key. Nicklas did a good job, I just had to manage the pace. Luzich Racing did an amazing job,” Pier Guidi said of the team’s second win of the year.

Once the race had settled down the battle for second was between the JMW Motorsport Ferrari and #55 Spirit of Race 488, the former taking second after a strong run from Matteo Cressoni, Wei Lu and Jeff Segal.

The all-female-crewed #83 Kessel Racing Ferrari of Manuela Gostner, Rahel Frey and Michelle Gatting had a quiet run to fourth.

More to follow…

Image courtesy of G-Drive Racing