GTE: Porsche’s Pink Pig tops the pack
Good fortune played a part in the retro-liveried racer’s victory, but the 911 RSR’S sheer pace meant it was always going to be the car to beat
In the absence of factory competition in the LMP1 ranks, many hopes were pinned on a 17-strong GTE Pro field to provide a welcome antidote to the expected tedium of Toyota domination in the fight for overall honours. It didn’t play out that way. In the event, Porsche took a relatively straightforward one-two with its pair of retro-themed Manthey-run 911 RSRS, with the winning #92 trio – Kevin Estre, Michael Christensen and Laurens Vanthoor – ending up completing one more lap than Gianmaria Bruni, Richard Lietz and Frederic Makowiecki in the #91 car. Two main factors contributed to this dominance: an early safety car that effectively gifted the #92 Porsche, sporting a livery based on the famous ‘Pink Pig’ Porsche 917 of 1971, a two-minute lead, plus the sheer pace of a car that entered the race as the clear favourite after qualifying. Porsche made a statement of intent in first qualifying when Bruni, back racing at Le Mans after a year in exile following his Ferrari split, posted an incredible 3m47.5s lap to go a second and a half clear of the competition. Such a quick time was only possible because of a tow from an LMP2 car, but it only added to the sense that Porsche – winless here in the GT ranks since 2013 – was perhaps due a victory on the marque’s 70th anniversary. A pre-race Balance of Performance adjustment handed the Porsche an extra 10kg of weight, but this made precious little difference in the race, with the Manthey cars plus the leading Ganassi-run Ford – the #68 shared by Sebastien Bourdais, Joey Hand and Dirk Muller – quickly pulling clear of the rest in the early stages. At the end of the opening stint, the #92 Porsche (along with a few other cars further down the field) went into the pits a lap earlier than the new-for-2018 mandated 11-lap opening-stint rule dictated. That decision proved to be the foundation for the ‘Pink Pig’ crew’s victory.
“I think you can say we deserved a bit of luck. It paid us back with Le Mans” LAURENS VANTHOOR
The three lead cars continued to be locked in battle until the fourth hour, when the safety car was deployed for the debris sprayed on the track by the #38 ORECA’S puncture. Vanthoor had just pitted to hand over to Estre before the incident, while Makowiecki, Bourdais and others were yet to pit – and were held at the end of the pitlane to wait for the next safety car train. This gave the #92 squad a lead that it practically couldn’t lose, given the car’s speed and reliability, and splitting up what had been until then an entertaining scrap. “For sure it helped us, but it was something we were trying to achieve from the beginning,” said Vanthoor of the safety car phase. “It was part of our strategy, but you need luck for that and somehow it worked out. I think we can say the three of us deserved a bit of a luck. We’ve done some big races together lately and been in a position to win, but it didn’t work out. Luck paid us back with Le Mans.” The safety car shook up the order behind, temporarily promoting the best of the new BMW M8 GTES to second (see page 34). But over the course of the night the natural hierarchy reasserted itself, with the #91 Porsche and #68 Ford proving the protagonists in what turned into a fraught and controversial battle for second place. A loose drain cover at Tertre Rouge in the 19th hour caused a lengthy safety car intervention that wiped out what had been a 30s advantage for the Rothmans-themed Porsche over the lead Ford, while also bringing the second best of the Fords, the #67 of Harry Tincknell, Andy Priaulx and Tony Kanaan, into play. Priaulx was vaulted from fourth to second with an excellent double move but, because the #67 was on a different pit schedule, that meant he didn’t play any part in the almighty scrap that developed between Bourdais and Makowiecki in the 21st hour. Bourdais had the pace to get by the #91 Porsche for second, but Makowiecki resorted to some questionable blocking
tactics to keep his fellow Frenchman at bay. That didn’t prevent the Indycar star from pulling off the move of the race as he went around the outside of his rival at Indianapolis, but on the run from Arnage to the Porsche Curves Makowiecki had the better straightline speed and squeezed Bourdais right onto the margins of the track and got back ahead. The stewards investigated Makowiecki’s driving, but no further action was taken, much to Bourdais’s disgust. In an epic tirade, he said: “[It’s unacceptable] these kinds of manoeuvres are allowed and race control doesn’t do anything. When do we say ‘stop’? When a car ends up in the trees? “I hope Fred [Makowiecki] is not very proud of himself because it was some very poor standards for a professional driver.” That was about as close as the #68 Ford got to second place. Once Hand took over from Bourdais, Makowiecki pulled away over his next stint, and by the chequered flag the margin between the two cars had grown to 26 seconds. The #67 Ford crew’s luck turned when the car was only given half a tank of fuel during one of its pitstops, which put it off strategy. The next safety car period dropped it a minute off the sister car in fourth, which is where it stayed at the flag. But post-race it turned out that Kanaan had failed to complete his minimum drive time, falling short of the mandatory six
hours by 44 minutes. That was converted into an 11-lap penalty that dropped the luckless #67 crew, whose WEC class title hopes were already dealt a blow by Tincknell’s megashunt at Spa, to 12th. The penalty promoted the best of the Corvette C7.RS, the #63 car of Antonio Garcia, Jan Magnussen and Mike Rockenfeller, into fourth place – a result earned on consistency and staying out of trouble rather than outright pace. Ferrari’s top finisher was the thirdstring #52 488 GTE ‘evo’ piloted by Pipo Derani, Toni Vilander and Antonio Giovinazzi, which likewise ran reliably throughout but lost ground with a pair of penalties for speeding in slow zones. The other two AF Corse-run Pro cars, the Wec-entered #51 and #71 488s, both had races to forget. James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra were ruled out of contention early on by a puncture, with an admirable recovery drive into the top five being derailed by a trip to the pits to replace a broken damper. That meant dropping back to an eventual seventh, behind the #66 Ford shared by Olivier Pla, Stefan Mucke and Billy Johnson that lost two laps when Johnson suffered suspension damage due to contact with a prototype in hour four. As for the Ferrari of Sam Bird, Miguel Molina and Davide Rigon, a three-minute stop-and-go penalty for not respecting the red light in the pitlane was followed by a long trip to the garage to repair a front splitter. The trio finished ninth. While Ferrari backed up its WEC cars with one extra 488, Porsche entered no fewer than four of its mid-engined 911 RSRS, supplementing its Manthey cars with the pair of CORE Autosport-run IMSA Sportscar championship entries. Of those, the quicker was the #93 entry of Nick Tandy, Earl Bamber and Patrick Pilet, which was battling with the #91 car before hopes of an all-porsche podium were thwarted by an alternator problem just shy of midnight. A philosophical Tandy reflected: “There’s a reason we put so many cars into the race, to maximise our chances, and they were all good cars. There was no surprise there were three running at the front. The cars were quick; I think we deserved the result in the end.” On the safety car that set up the #92 Porsche for the win, he added: “That’s pure luck. That could have been a Ford, it could have been a Corvette. It could have been us, but then we’d have been bloody annoyed to have lost a two-minute lead…” Could have, would have, should have. Good fortune undoubtedly played a role in determining the exact victors, but a Porsche win seemed near-certain from the moment Bruni banged in that 3m47s. It’s just a shame it wasn’t a better fight.