ELMS – The title for Alpine, victory for S. Loeb Racing

Signatech-Alpine retains his title in ELMS at the end of the 4 Hours of Estoril, the fifth place of Nelson Panciatici, Oliver Webb and Paul-Loup Chatin having proved sufficient. L'Alpine A450b led the debates for a long time before receiving a series of penalties. If the stop & go was inflicted for an error made during a refueling, the three minutes of stoppage supposed to sanction a slightly too strong start in the pits of Oliver Webb are, to say the least, perplexing. The third place of the Zytek Z11SN-Nissan of Jota Sport driven by Filipe Albuquerque, Simon Dolan and Harry Tincknell was nevertheless insufficient to allow the British team to be crowned.

The strange choices of the race management nevertheless allowed Sébastien Loeb Racing to achieve its first victory in the discipline. The Oreca 03R-Nissan of Vincent Capillaire and Jimmy Eriksson, which was taking its first steps in LMP2, was a good half a minute ahead of the Morgan-Judd of Newblood by Morand Racing led by Christian Klien, Pierre Ragues and Gary Hirsch. The Race Performance Oreca 03R-Judd of Franck Mailleux, Michel Frey and Patric Niederhauser had to be content with fourth place after being on the provisional podium.

SMP Racing wins the GTE and GTC titles, including a category victory for the Ferrari n°72 of Andrea Bertolini, Viktor Shaitar and Sergey Zlobin who took advantage of the misfortunes of the F458 n°55 of AF Corse of Duncan Cameron, Matt Griffin and Michele Rugolo victim of contact with the McLaren ART GP by Ricardo Gonzalez, Karim Ajlani and Alex Brundle. The Italian team took second place with the #54 of Piergiuseppe Perazzini, Marco Cioci and Michael Lyons ahead of the #66 JMW Motorsport of Daniel McKenzie, George Richardson and Daniel Zampieri. In GTC, Marc VDS Racing won with the BMW Z4 of Bas Leinders, Mrkus Palttala and Henry Hassid.

Discover the report of the 4 Hours of Estoril in issue 1983 of AUTOhebdo, available from tomorrow evening in digital version on all platforms, and from Wednesday on newsstands.