4 Hours of Portimão - The challenges of the ELMS final in Portugal

The sixth and final round of the European Le Mans Series takes place this Sunday, October 24 in Portimão. Even if the LM P2 title has already been acquired by WRT, this final does not lack challenges in all categories.

Published on 22/10/2021 à 14:40

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4 Hours of Portimão – The challenges of the ELMS final in Portugal

LM P2: second qualifying place for the 24 Hours of Le Mans

After the coronation of the trio Louis Délétraz, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye of Team WRT at Spa-Francorchamps, only second qualifying place for the 24 Hours of Le Mans remains to be played for in the LM P2 category. A fight which promises to be exciting since three teams are in three points to win this ticket: G-Drive (Roman Rusinov, Franco Colapinto, Nyck de Vries) with 64 units, Panis Racing (Julien Canal, WIllians Stevens, James Allen) with 62,5 and finally United Autosport (Phil Hanson, Jonathan Aberdein, Ton Gamble) with 61. Mathematically, a fourth car is still in the running with the Duqueine number 30 (Tristan Gommendy, Rene Binder, Memo Rojas) just 12 lengths from second place.

LM P3: 5 points between COOL Racing and DKR Engineering

The suspense remains total in the LM P3 category for the title since only five units separate the COOL Racing number 19 (Matt Bell, Niklas Kruetten, Nicolas Maulini) from the Duqueine M30 – D08 – Nissan of DKR Engineering number 3 from the duo composed by Laurents Hörr and Mathieu de Barbuat. The Luxembourg team remains on an impressive series of three consecutive victories and four poles in a row, driven by the double German title holder of the Michelin Le Mans Cup, chosen to participate in the Bahrain Rookie Test at the wheel of the champion car of the GTE Pro category in WEC, that is to say the Ferrari 488 GTE Evo or Porsche 911 RSR – 19.

Also read > Laurents Hörr at the Rookie Test in Bahrain

LMGTE: Three Ferraris for two places

Three Ferrari 488 GTE EVO are still in the running for the GTE category title: the Iron Lynx number 80 of Matteo Cressoni, Rino Mastronardi and Miguel Molina, the AF Corse number 88 of François Perrodo, Emmanuel Collard and Alessio Rovera as well as the issue 55 of Spirit of Race by Duncan Cameron, Matthew Griffin and David Perel. With a 20-point lead, the first Ferrari only needs 7 points from sixth place to be crowned. The fight promises to be tighter for second qualifying place at Le Mans with only four points between the two cars at the Prancing Horse.

Also read > The Portimão final with 41 cars