Portimao ELMS: United Autosports wins tactical battle after red flag
Phil Hanson, Tom Gamble and Jonathan Aberdein won a tactical race for United Autosports in the European Le Mans Series season finale at Portimao.
With three out of four titles yet to be decided and invitations to the Le Mans 24 Hhours grid on the line, few were in doubt that the four hours of Portimao would prove critical to the teams contesting for the remaining honours and prizes.
After Cool Racing’s Charles Milesi converted his pole position into the lead and built a substantial gap over the chasing United Autosports, G-Drive Racing and Team WRT squads, the race was interrupted halfway through the first stint when Memo Rojas lost his left rear wheel while coming onto the main straight and spun his Duqueine Engineering ORECA wildly across the track.
Andreas Laskaratos got caught up in the incident and, while trying to avoid Rojas and several other cars, hit the pitwall square on. This destroyed his 1 Aim Villorba Corse car and forced a red flag for a 30-minute track clear-up.
As the race progressed after the restart, United Autosports went off sequence with its pitstops, vaulting both British cars to first and second for the time being. Initially the G-Drive Racing Aurus squad were set to be its biggest rival until Franco Colapinto picked up a drivethrough penalty for track limits infringements.
This left the Russian-flagged team out of contention for the win and brought Team WRT into the fight. The team, who had already won the ELMS title, followed a more conventional tyre strategy and led mid-race before falling back again as United’s strategy ensured Gamble jumped Louis Deletraz during the stops.
Deletraz tried to hunt down Gamble but the gap opened up to almost 20 seconds with the British driver conversing his tyre life to stretch out his stint to secure victory together with Aberdein and Hanson, United’s first ELMS win of the year.
Third would go to the Algarve Pro Racing car of Sophia Florsch, Richard Bradley and Ferdinand Habsburg after fighting back from a puncture.
#37 Cool Racing Oreca 07 - Gibson: Alexandre Coigny, Nicolas Lapierre, Charles Milesi
Photo by: ELMS
LMP2 Pro-Am went to the dominant COOL Racing team of Milesi, Nicolas Lapierre and Alexandre Coigny, seeing off championship leaders G-Drive Racing but couldn’t do enough to take the title away from John Falb and Rui Andrade.
In LMP3 Team DKR’s Matthieu de Barbuat and Laurents Horr proved to be the class of the field but only after it fought off the #2 United Autosports Ligier.
A drivethrough penalty for the United team gave the championship contenders even more breathing room as they fought with COOL Racing for the ELMS title and the Le Mans entry that comes with it.
COOL’s race went from bad to worse as the team tried to fight back from a lowly grid position before a slow stop effectively ended the title-aspirations for the championship leaders.
As United Autosports dropped back, Inter Europol Competition moved into second with the Polish team showing great pace to keep the DKR Duqueine in sight. It was not enough however to unseat Horr and De Barbuat from the lead as the team sealed the title in with their fourth consecutive win.
Third went to United Autosports, finishing an uncharacteristic tough year without a race win.
Iron Lynx’s Rino Mastronardi, Miguel Molina and Matteo Cressoni dominated the final GTE race of the season, seeing off a spirited start from the Proton Competition Porsche to not only win their third race of the season but seal the title as well.
Second would go to the #93 Proton Competition Porsche of Felipe Laser, Michael Fassbender and Richard Lietz while Iron Lynx’s ‘Les Iron Dames’ Rahel Frey, Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting came in third.
ELMS - Portimao 4 Hours race results
| Cla | # | Driver | Car | Laps | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 |  Philip Hanson  Jonathan Aberdein Tom Gamble | Oreca 07 | 130 | 4:00'00.433 | |
| 2 | 41 |  Robert Kubica  Louis Deletraz  Ye Yifei | Oreca 07 | 130 | 4:00'22.181 | 21.748 |
| 3 | 24 |  Sophia Flörsch  Ferdinand Habsburg Richard Bradley | Oreca 07 | 130 | 4:00'23.111 | 22.678 |
| 4 | 65 |  Julien Canal Will Stevens  James Allen | Oreca 07 | 130 | 4:00'37.047 | 36.614 |
| 5 | 26 |  Roman Rusinov  Franco Colapinto  Nyck de Vries | Aurus 01 | 130 | 4:00'39.763 | 39.330 |
| 6 | 37 | Alexandre Coigny Nicolas Lapierre Charles Milesi | Oreca 07 | 130 | 4:01'21.507 | 1'21.074 |
| 7 | 28 | Paul Lafargue Paul-Loup Chatin Patrick Pilet | Oreca 07 | 129 | 4:00'12.002 | 1 Lap |
| 8 | 25 |  John Falb  Rui Andrade Gustavo Menezes | Aurus 01 | 129 | 4:00'14.037 | 1 Lap |
| 9 | 35 |  Francesco Dracone Sergio Campana Markus Pommer | Oreca 07 | 128 | 4:00'27.699 | 2 Laps |
| 10 | 32 | Job Van Uitert Nico Jamin  Manuel Maldonado | Oreca 07 | 128 | 4:00'47.043 | 2 Laps |
| 11 | 29 | Matthieu Lahaye Jean Baptiste Lahaye Gianluca Giraudi | Oreca 07 | 128 | 4:00'57.744 | 2 Laps |
| 12 | 39 | Vincent Capillaire Maxime Robin Arnold Robin | Oreca 07 | 127 | 4:00'08.097 | 3 Laps |
| 13 | 4 | Laurents Hörr Mathieu de | Duqueine M30 - D08 | 123 | 4:00'30.960 | 7 Laps |
| 14 | 13 | Martin Hippe Ugo De Adam Eteki | Ligier JS P320 | 123 | 4:00'43.949 | 7 Laps |
| 15 | 2 | Wayne Boyd Robert Wheldon Edouard Cauhaupe | Ligier JS P320 | 123 | 4:01'13.035 | 7 Laps |
| 16 | 9 | Matthias Kaiser  Rory Penttinen | Ligier JS P320 | 123 | 4:01'23.171 | 7 Laps |
| 17 | 42 | Fabien Michal Lucas Legeret | Ligier JS P320 | 122 | 4:01'03.678 | 8 Laps |
| 18 | 8 | Eric Trouillet Sébastien Page David Droux | Ligier JS P320 | 122 | 4:01'06.509 | 8 Laps |
| 19 | 11 | Mattia Drudi Antoine Doquin Finn Gehrsitz | Ligier JS P320 | 122 | 4:01'16.295 | 8 Laps |
| 20 | 14 | Mateusz Kaprzyk Nicolas Pino Patryk Krupinski | Ligier JS P320 | 122 | 4:01'16.784 | 8 Laps |
| 21 | 19 | Nicolas Maulini Matthew Bell Niklas Krütten | Ligier JS P320 | 122 | 4:01'45.608 | 8 Laps |
| 22 | 3 | Jim McGuire Duncan Tappy Andrew Bentley | Ligier JS P320 | 121 | 4:00'12.054 | 9 Laps |
| 23 | 20 | Rob Hodes Alex Fontana | Ligier JS P320 | 121 | 4:00'20.071 | 9 Laps |
| 24 | 6 | Nick Adcock Austin McCusker Max Koebolt | Ligier JS P320 | 121 | 4:00'26.703 | 9 Laps |
| 25 | 80 | Matteo Cressoni Rino Mastronardi  Miguel Molina | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 121 | 4:01'05.378 | 9 Laps |
| 26 | 93 | Michael Fassbender Felipe Fernández Laser Richard Lietz | Porsche 911 RSR - 19 | 121 | 4:01'22.362 | 9 Laps |
| 27 | 83 | Rahel Frey  Sarah Bovy  Michelle Gatting | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 120 | 4:00'03.689 | 10 Laps |
| 28 | 55 | Duncan Cameron  Matthew Griffin David Perel | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 120 | 4:00'05.441 | 10 Laps |
| 29 | 77 | Christian Ried Cooper MacNeil Gianmaria Bruni | Porsche 911 RSR - 19 | 120 | 4:00'10.761 | 10 Laps |
| 30 | 66 | Rodrigo Sales Jody Fannin Thong Wei | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 120 | 4:00'35.318 | 10 Laps |
| 31 | 95 | John Hartshorne Ross Gunn Ollie Hancock | Aston Martin Vantage AMR | 120 | 4:00'42.269 | 10 Laps |
| 32 | 12 | Gary Hauser Tom Cloet Guilherme Oliveira | Duqueine M30 - D08 | 120 | 4:00'43.453 | 10 Laps |
| 33 | 60 | Claudio Schiavoni Giorgio Sernagiotto Paolo Ruberti | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 120 | 4:01'23.293 | 10 Laps |
| 34 | 61 | Franck Dezoteux Pierre Ragues Côme Ledogar | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 120 | 4:01'24.596 | 10 Laps |
| 35 | 88 | François Perrodo Emmanuel Collard Alessio Rovera | Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | 120 | 4:01'27.604 | 10 Laps |
| 36 | 7 | Tony Wells Colin Noble Jr. | Ligier JS P320 | 109 | 4:00'51.377 | 21 Laps |
| 15 | Mike Benham Alex Kapadia Malthe Jakobsen | Ligier JS P320 | 100 | 3:58'55.433 | 30 Laps | |
| 5 | Cresp Christophe Fabien Lavergne Adrien Chila | Ligier JS P320 | 98 | 3:18'29.217 | 32 Laps | |
| 30 | Tristan Gommendy Rene Binder  Memo Rojas | Oreca 07 | 17 | 27'28.772 | 113 Laps | |
| 18 | Bressan Alessandro  Andreas Laskaratos Damiano Fioravanti | Ligier JS P320 | 15 | 25'31.195 | 115 Laps | |
| View full results | ||||||
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