LMP2 decided by last-lap drama
Many teams were left contemplating what might have been in the LMP2 class this year, but Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi brought it home
As the final hours of the Le Mans 24 Hours ticked down, the WRT squad looked pretty much on course for an LMP2 1-2. The Belgian team did go on to complete a debut victory in the French enduro, yet by a scant seven tenths of a second and with one of its cars sitting motionless in the Esses.
Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi added to a WRT CV loaded with endurance successes in the GT3 arena with Audi – victories in the 24-hour classics at Spa and Nurburgring included – after a dramatic finish in the secondary prototype class. The World Endurance Championship regulars were set to bring their ORECA-GIBSON 07 home second to team-mates Robert Kubica, Louis Deletraz and Yifei Ye, only for WRT’S European Le Mans Series car to grind to a halt on the very final lap. A broken throttle sensor shut the Gibson engine down on sportscar rookie Ye. The team lost its data link to the ORECA one moment and the next the car was rolling down the hill after the Dunlop Bridge without power.
Yet it wasn’t simply a case of the sister car cruising around the final lap to inherit the victory. Frijns had to fight for it. The #28
Jota ORECA with Tom Blomqvist at the wheel was closing fast on a car that Frijns reckoned hadn’t been quite right since the second stint of a quadruple to bring the car home.
Blomqvist, who shared the Jota car with Stoffel Vandoorne and Sean Gelael, crossed the line at the start of the final lap just
1.8s behind Frijns. It was a fraught final lap for both of them as the Toyotas lined up for a formation finish and concertinaed the field behind them.
Frijns just hung on despite clipping a GTE Am Aston Martin on the start/finish straight and coming frighteningly close to collecting the official waving the chequered flag in traditional Le Mans style out on the race track.
Frijns, Habsburg and Milesi, all racing in the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time, had been in the pound seats until the air jacks failed on their ORECA when Frijns climbed aboard for the run to the flag.
WRT had to employ what sporting director Thierry Tassin called a “Macgyver” solution – a reference to the ingenuity of the lead character in the US TV action show of that name – to overcome the problem. The team packs giant inflatable pillows that can be inserted under the car for this exact eventuality. The problem was it could only get the car up into the air at one end, forcing it to change only the tyres on one axle at a time.
This issue deprived the winning WRT car of a lead it had held for much of the race: it led for 220 of the 363 laps completed by the top two in P2. The time lost in the pits, which included an unscheduled stop for rears after a tyre was damaged when Frijns was tagged by a GTE Am class Porsche, allowed Ye to move ahead in the sister car late in the 22nd hour.
The Dutch driver explained that the car wasn’t quite right after this incident and it ultimately played a role in making the finish so tight. “I was on the radio saying something was wrong,” he said. “There was no support from the rear of the car anymore. It was our race to lose, basically, through the race and then it became our race to win.”
Blomqvist had got the gap between himself and Frijns in what was then the battle for second to under 20s at the final round of stops, only to lose 10 so seconds when he got boxed in when he pitted. The deficit went up to nearly 30s, but he was able to scythe time out of the struggling WRT car.
“It is still great to get second, but to lose by seven tenths is bittersweet,” said Blombqvist. “I would actually have been happier to lose by more.”
Blomqvist was adamant that he and his team-mates would have been right with WRT anyway but for a double penalty early on Saturday evening. The car was issued with a drivethrough because Blomqvist received a late call to duck into the pits early in hour four during the first safety car period (not including the one behind which the race started).
When he left his box, he was confronted by a green light at the pitlane exit and joined the wrong one of the three safety car queues. The onus is on the team to get its driver in the correct crocodile, the misdemeanour coming with a 90s stop/go. More time was lost when Jota got its tyre strategy wrong by putting the car onto intermediates rather than staying on slicks during another safety car.
It looked like it was going to be a bad day for Jota. Antonio Felix da Costa was on fire at Le Mans last week in the car he shared with Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez. The Portuguese put the car in the barriers at Tertre Rouge in opening free practice on Wednesday after tangling with a GTE Am Ferrari. After that he was quite simply imperious, setting two laps good enough to top
“To lose by seven tenths is bittersweet. I would actually have been happier to lose by more”
the opening qualifying session, blitzing hyperpole qualifying by half a second and running as high as second overall on the damp track early on.
It went wrong for the crew when Davidson climbed aboard after two and a half hours. He spun out of the lead at the Dunlop Curve in light rain as he started his first flying lap, holding his hand up afterwards to say he was at fault. The incident had a knock-on effect later on: the off damaged the oil filter, leading to a 30minute stay in the garage that meant the Jota car could finish no better than eighth, five laps down on the class winners.
The Panis Racing/tech 1 squad took third in class for the second year in a row, though its ORECA was a more competitive proposition this time around with Will Stevens, James Allen and silver-rated Julien Canal, the only one of the trio to carry over from last year’s line-up. Canal had nothing for the recovering Jota car on Sunday morning when the team was knocked out of the top three. Without a twenty-something super silver, Panis was always going to have its work cut out to improve on last year’s result.
“We were always there or thereabouts,” said Stevens, who set fastest LMP2 lap late on. “I think we maximised what we had.
We’re a small team compared with our competitors and you’ve got to look at the total package we’ve got. We’re happy.”
United Autosports, winner in P2 at Le Mans last year, salvaged fourth place with Paul di Resta, Alex Lynn and Wayne Boyd after a difficult weekend. Di Resta was leading the race in hour five when a return of proper rain triggered a mad five minutes. Manuel Maldonado, who’d just gone a lap down in the United entry he shared with Nico Jamin and Jonathan Aberdein, lost it under braking for the Dunlop Curve, skated across the gravel and T-boned his team-mate. Ten minutes were lost to repairs to the front, rear and left-hand sidepod of United’s star car. Despite the patch-up the car remained bang on the pace and came through to another top 10 overall at Le Mans for United.
Reigning champions Filipe Albuquerque and Phil Hanson, paired with regular WEC team-mate Fabio Scherer, had a nightmare
“We’re a small team compared to our competitors and you’ve got to look at the total package”
opening to the race when the first named struggled on the Goodyear intermediates, but was into the top three by one-quarter duration.
The #22 United car was running third when it suffered an electrical glitch right at the start of the 14th hour. Ninety or so minutes were lost as the team chased the problem, a collective change of alternator, battery and wiring loom finally solving the issue. That left them as the last finisher in P2.
Behind the Euro Interpol and IDEC squads in fifth and sixth came the best of the G-drive entries. Franco Colapinto ran into the Richard Mille ORECA with Sophia Florsch at the wheel when she braked on the drag from Arnage to the Porsche Curves as a slow zone was being called. Colapinto, who was not penalised for the accident, explained that the marshalling boards were still showing the section of track to be green.
The car co-driven by Romain Rusinov and Nyck de Vries was undoubtedly a potential winner. On the 100-lap averages it was second only to the second-place Jota car.
LMP2 at Le Mans this year was a case of what might have been for many cars but no team experienced the extremes like WRT.