Vergne wins again as G-drive ORECA trio take a straightforward ELMS victory
G-drive trio Roman Rusinov, Andrea Pizzitola and Jean-eric Vergne stepped closer to the European Le Mans Series title by scoring a third consecutive win with relative ease at Silverstone.
Rusinov flung his Tds-run ORECA around the outside of early leader Julien Canal at Stowe after their first stops, but Canal’s team-mate Timothe Buret picked up a drivethrough for an FCY infringement that sent them out of contention.
Even internal competition from the sister #40 G-drive entry fell short. James Allen spent part of his stint on Rusinov’s tail but, once Jose Gutierrez took over, the car fell backwards quickly with technical woes. Vergne then lapped the entire field before taking the chequered flag.
A full course yellow, caused by Victor Shaytar skating straight on at Village, let Racing Engineering get creative with strategy as the only frontrunner not to pit. Norman Nato took over from the Ford Wec-focused Olivier Pla’s stand-in Matthieu Vaxiviere late on and scythed his way to second, only for brake failure to send him into the Vale barriers.
This gave Dragonspeed a fortuitous second place, with first Ben Hanley and then Nicolas Lapierre surging from the rear to podium contention following slow stints from bronze driver Henrik Hedman.
Dragonspeed would only have been third had IDEC Sport’s Paul Lafargue not required a splash and dash fuel stop with 10 minutes left.
United Autosports trio Anthony Wells, Garrett Grist and Matthew Bell won the LMP3 class, though United had been set for a 1-2. Sean Rayhall spun at Abbey on the opening lap and recovered to second before the car lost several minutes during its final stop with power issues.
Ecurie Ecosse’s Colin Noble, Alex Kapadia and Christian Stubbe Olsen inherited second.
GTE was decided by a grandstand finish despite first and second place not running together on track. Repeated track limit infringements earned both the JMW Motorsport and Spirit of Race Ferraris 10s penalties, as Proton Competition’s lead driver Matteo Cairoli closed on both.
Cairoli reached within 8s of JMW’S Miguel Molina but encountered Matt Griffin on his final lap and finished an agonising 0.124s away from beating Molina, Liam Griffin and Alex Macdowall when the penalty was applied.