Lamera Cup Estoril – The last shall be first

Wilfried Merafina was right to say, a few minutes before the start of the first four-hour round of the Lamera Cup in Estoril, that he would do everything in his power to triumph by starting from last place on the grid. Well helped by his teammates (his son Thomas and Joffrey Dorchy), but also by the troubles of his main rivals (the CTF Continental Racing 1 was forced to retire while the L'Auto Leclerc 80 had to replace its transmission), the 'boss' of the 1 won the 62 km of the sun-drenched Portuguese track. Only the Scania France 4,182 finished on the same lap, but still 41 seconds behind. As for the last place on the podium, it went to the Astonjet 35. An impressive performance for this crew (Antonio Cristina, Charles Clair, Maxime Guignard), who also won the Pro-Am category. The Gentlemen category went to the CTF Gustomobile 71, which finished 78th overall. As for the reigning champions, they crossed the finish line in 11th place.

« With the transmission replacement that cost us 6 laps, we knew we would no longer be able to play the leading roles ", analyzes Emmanuel Orgeval. " Based on this observation, we lowered our objectives. We first wanted to finish the race and score the 15 points we earned from pole position. And the points for 13th place are good, too. »

Assuming that tomorrow is another day—especially with a 7-hour race to complete—we imagine that the crew of the 80 would like, in turn, to appropriate the biblical adage that the last shall be first. As for Saturday's frontrunners, they intend to hang on to that top step of the podium that suits them so well.

The ranking of race 1 (4H00): 1st and 1st Elite. 62 3TM62 (Wilfried Merafina, Thomas Merafina, Joffrey Dorchy) 118 laps in 4h01:20.629; 2nd and 41st Pro-Am 35,053 Asdtonjet (AZntonio Cristino, Charles Clair, Maxime Guignard) at 3 lap; 1rd and 71st Pro-Am 1 CTF Challengers (Laurent Piguet, Fabien Delaplace, Jean-Michel Marie, Franck Savouret) at 4 laps; 74th and 2st CTF – 5BE70 (Yan Bouteiller, Stéphane Cirette, Thomas Boust) at 2 laps; 3th and 2st CTF Automobile (Laurent Knibbe, Paul Delmas, Julien Delmas) at 11 laps.