United Autosports Take The Win At Spa – Championship Goes Down To The Wire – Prema vs Panis
The #22 United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibson of Duncan Tappy, Phil Hanson and Tom Gamble came out on top in an incident-packed 4 Hours of Spa, round five of the 2022 European Le Mans Series.
The full points haul though does not keep the United car in the hunt for the overall title as Prema team’s #9 Oreca with full-season drivers Ferdinand Habsburg and Louis Deletraz combined with Juan Manuel Correa to claim third place after a long battle with eventual second place finishers Pietro Fittipaldi, David Heinemeier Hansson and Fabio Scherer in the #43 Inter Europol Competition fending off repeated attacks to score their first big result of the season.
Panis Racing would finish a fighting fourth after an odd strategy call that saw the as the only leading runners not to pit in the final Full Course Yellow period, ceding time to their Championship rivals Prema in doing so, the #65 and #9 now the only two cars that can win the title in Portimao next month.
Fifth were the #37 Cool Racing Oreca trio of Niklas Kreutten who had an excellent opening stint, Yifei Ye and Nicolas Lapierre, the Swiss squad had looked set fair for a very strong result until a tussle with Scherer saw the car run over the infield with a huge lock-up from Lapierre into La Source shortly afterwards seeing the cr run straight on, rejoin via the escape road but suffer a puncture soon afterwards – a fightback saw the car recover from tenth to fifth but out of reach of the Championship.
LMP2 Pro-Am saw some spirited battles throughout, the #31 TDS x Vaillante Oreca running in the overall top three for much of the middle part of the race but the team had saved their Bronze driver time for later in the race, and multiple pitlane penalties also hit their run, they would drop to fourth
The main battle in the second half of the race saw Alessio Rovera in the #88 AF Corse car he shares with François Perrodo and Nicklas Neilsen, fending off the #34 Racing Team Turkey car started by Salih Yoluc with Charlie Eastwood doing the heavy lifting in the middle part of the race.
With Jack Aitken racing in ADAC GT Masters this weekend the final stints fell to guesting Will Stevens and he harassed the Italian hard, before taking advantage of the mildest stumble in traffic at the Bus Stop on the final lap, the run to the line became a drag race with Stevens grabbing the win by 0.046 of a second.
The #47 Algarve Pro Racing trio of John Falb, Alex Peroni and James Allen came home third in the Pro-Am standings after a competitive run, spoiled by a penalty for track limits in the second half of the race.
The #34 extends the lead in the Championship from new second placed team AF Corse with a 22 point advantage for the Racing Team Turkey squad. Nielsen Racing’ #24 outfit are still mathematically in the hunt too.
The #13 Inter Europol Competition trio of Charles Crews, Nico Pino and Guilherme Oliveira scored a third consecutive class win to take the Championship lead and grab a 19 point lead over their now sole title challenges, the #17 Cool Racing crew of Malthe Jakobsen, Mike Benham and Maurice Smith, the car eliminated from the race after taking a rear end hit into Les Combes after an error from Horst Felbermayr in the #15 RLR MSport Ligier with Smith at the wheel causing damage to the rear wing, right rear corner, and undertray – the car eventually struggled back to the pits but retired there.
The #4 DKR Engineering Duqueine would claim second place, the team opting to go off strategy early in the race, and finding enough pace to take advantage when other caution periods emerged.
Completing the podium was the #7 Nielsen Racing Ligier of Tony Wells and James Littlejohn, making it home after a substantial nerf from the rear in the final hour after a mistake from Alex Kapadia in the #5 RLR MSport car, Alex losing control after running wide under braking as he tried to let an LMP2 car wide but then running into the rear of Littlejohn.
The RLR car would have to pit for a replacement nose section.
GTE would see the first win of the season for the #57 Kessel Racing Ferrari which led twice in the race, from Pole in the early stages in the hands of ELMS debutant Conrad Grunewald until he found one of the wet patches up from Eau Rouge before the track dried out entirely, the car launched into a lurid spin first to the outside and then back across the track before being missed by millimetres by Sarah Bovy in the then second-placed #83 Iron Lynx Ferrari.
That allowed Ahmad Al Harthy into the lead in the #69 Oman Racing by TF Sport Aston Martin, but Bovy would get by with the #83 leading for much of the mid-part of the race, Doriane Pin doing a fine job of securing the advantage and handing over to Michelle Gatting for the run to the flag where the Dane had the unenviable task of fending off a looming challenge from the recovering #57 by now in the hands of Mickel Jensen.
The Kessel man would prevail eventually for Jensen to become the first driver to take race wins in all three ELMS classes – today his first in GTE to add to both LMP3 and LMP2 victories in past seasons.
The Iron Dames would come home second after a fighting performance throughout, with the #18 Absolute racing trio of Andrew Haryanto, Martin Rump and Alessio Picariello completing the podium for their first appearance in the top three.
In the Championship stakes Kessel closed the gap to the points leading #77 Proton Competition crew, the Black Porsche and Yellow Ferrari will fight for the Series win next month.
More to Follow
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