Rebellion wins Petit Le Mans, Muscle and TDS title

Rebellion Racing will have mastered its subject at Petit Le Mans by taking pole and victory with Neel Jani, Andrea Belicchi and Nicolas Cheers qui ont offert à l’écurie helvétique sa première victoire à Road Atlanta au terme d’une course qui a vu rapidement les autres LMP1 être en déroute. Le Muscle Milk Pickett Racing semblait en mesure de se battre face à l’équipe suisse, Lucas Luhr prenant même les commandes de la course dans la première heure à l’issue des ravitaillements. Mais la HPD ARX-03a n°6 a vu sa course étruite après avoir été sortie de la piste par une Porsche 911 GT3 Cup de la catégorie GTC.  40 minutes de réparation ont alors été nécessaires pour permettre à l’auto de reprendre la piste. L’équipage Luhr-Dumas-Graf ne se classe que 34e mais profite de la déroute des Lola du Dyson Racing pour décrocher le titre en ALMS.

The poor performance of the LMP1s allowed the lower category to stand out. Bouchut-Diaz-Tucker take victory in LM P2 by placing the HPD ARX-03b of Level 5 Motorsports in second place in the general classification, which allows Scott Tucker and Christophe Bouchut to take the LMP2 crown in ALMS. The podium of the race is completed by the Morgan from the Conquest team Endurance with Plowman-Lux-Heinemeier Hansson (before decommissioning of the latter) who only failed eight seconds behind the HPD on the finish line. Tucker and the Franchitti brothers therefore complete the podium with the second HPD ARX-03b from Level 5 Motorsports while the top five is completed by the Oreca 03 from Thiriet by TDS Racing driven by Thiriet-Tinseau-Beche who won the title in ELMS by winning in front of the Highcroft Racing DeltaWing led by Gunnar Jeannette and Lucas Ordonez. Alex Popow wins the ALMS L MPC title with victory for Core Autosport represented by Popow-Wilkins-Dalziel. The Oak Racing Morgan (Nicolet-Pla-Baguette) only took fifth place in LM P2 after seeing its race disrupted by a starter problem.

Extreme Speed ​​Motorsports takes GT victory with Ferrari 458 Italia of Vilander-van Overbeek-Sharp which is only 30 seconds ahead of the Corvette C6 ZR1 of Garcia-Magnussen-Taylor. The Chevrolet finished ahead of the two BMW M3 E92s from Auberlen-Summerton-Müller and Summerton-Alzen-Müller. NGT Motorsports won without difficulty in GTC with the Farnbacher-Giermaziak-Cisneros team ahead of the two Porsches from the TRG team with Canache-Pumpelly-Di Guidia and Collard-Hedlund-Gutierrez. IMSA Performance Matmut easily won in GTE Am and thus won the category crown in ELMS with the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR from Narac-Armindo-Pons.

The Petit Le Mans podium has changed following an investigation by the stewards. The #37 Morgan which had taken third position in the general classification was downgraded, with Martin Plowman being downgraded for driving seven minutes too long. The HPD ARX-03b n°55 of Level 5 Motorsports of Franchitti-Tucker-Franchitti thus inherits the last step of the podium.

Discover the report of the ELMS and ALMS finals at Petit Le Mans in the next issue of AUTOhebdo, available from Tuesday in digital version for iPad, PC and Mac, and from Wednesday on newsstands.