24h Le Mans
The three qualifying sessions at the final round of the European Le Mans Series season were hard fought, particularly in the LMP2 class. In the end, Duqueine Engineering scored the pole with the #29 ORECA 07-Gibson, currently a contender for runner-up in the championship. The car will be joined on the front row of the starting grid at the 4 Hours of Portimão by Panis-Barthez Compétition's #23 Ligier JS P217-Gibson.
Nicolas Jamin (Duqueine Engineering's #29 ORECA 07-Gibson) clocked the fastest time during qualifying in 1:33.197 ahead of British driver Will Stevens at the wheel of Panis-Barthez Compétition's #23 Ligier JS P217-Gibson. The third best time went to local competitor Filipe Albuquerque in United Autosports' #22 Ligier JS P217-Gibson. Seven cars qualified within a second, and surprisingly, one of the contenders for runner-up in the ELMS Teams championship - Racing Engineering's #24 ORECA-Gibson - will start from 12th position!
The LMP3 session was interrupted by a red flag six minutes in when Eurointernational's #11 Ligier JS P3 took a detour into a gravel trap. Two Norma M30-Nissans will share the first row, the #19 fielded by M Racing-YMR ahead of Ultimate's #17. The third fastest time was clocked by AT Racing's #9 Ligier JS P3.
In LMGTE, the quickest of the six cars in the class was the #66 Ferrari 488 GTE (Liam Griffin, Alex MacDowall and Miguel Molina) entered by JMW Motorsport, ahead of Proton Competition's two Porsche 911 RSRs, the #77 then the #88, with the latter still leading the championship.
Check out the times HERE.
The start of the race will be given tomorrow, Sunday 28 October at 12:30 local time.
PHOTOS (Copyright - Jakob Ebrey Photography)
