ELMS: Victory number three for #17 of COOL Racing and an all-Ligier JS P320 podium
The Ligier JS P320 teams competing in the European Le Mans Series gathered at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit from 21 to 24 September. As usual, the highly technical Belgian track offered plenty of surprises for the competitors. The Ligier JS P320 was in dominating form: best times in free practice, pole position (#8 of Team Virage) but also victory (#17 from COOL Racing) and a sweep of the podium (#13 of Inter Europol Competition and #11 from Eurointernational).
• Free practice 1 on Friday, 22 September, was led by the #31 Racing Spirit of Leman Ligier JS P320 (Antoine Doquin, Jacques Wolff and Jean-Ludovic Foubert) with a best time of 2:12.789s.
• The following day, in Free practice 2, the #8 Team Virage (Nick Adcock, Michael Jensen and Manuel Espirito Santo) set the pace, with a best time of 2:12.212s.
• Later in the day, Manuel Espirito Santo took pole position in the #8. The Portuguese driver gave his team its first ELMS pole position.
• The 4 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps began Sunday morning. The #11 Eurointernational Ligier JS P320 (Matthew Richard Bell and Adam Ali) put in an excellent start, gaining five places and the immediate lead. The same was true of the #35 from Ultimate (Eric Trouillet, Matthieu Lahaye and Jean-Baptiste Lahaye), which moved up six places on lap one. It was fourth behind the #7 Nielsen Racing entry (Anthony Wells and Ryan Harper-Ellam) and the #17 of COOL Racing (Adrien Chila, Marcos Siebert and Alejandro Garcia).
• The #35 continued to climb up the classification to second place behind the #11, which dominated for more than half the race.
• At the end of the second hour, Ultimate's LMP3 took first place. It was followed by the #15 from RLR MSport (Horst Felbermayr, Gaël Julien and Mateusz Kaprzyk), the #17 and the #13 of Inter Europol Competition (Miguel Cristóvão, Kai Askey and Wyatt Brichacek). Five laps later, the #35 made a pit stop, handing the lead to the #17 of COOL Racing.
• The Swiss team's car, which had already won three races, maintained its advantage to the chequered flag.
• Inter Europol Competition's #13 finished second, ahead of the third-placed #11. One of its drivers, Matthew Richard Bell, posted the fastest lap of the race in 2:13.990s.
• The #17 of COOL Racing still leads the championship with 91 points. The #13 of Inter Europol is second with 45 points, followed by the #31 of Racing Spirit of Leman with 44 points.
Everything is still to play for! The season's final two races will take place at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve from October 18-22 in Portimao, Portugal.
For results, CLICK HERE.
For more information about the Ligier JS P320, CLICK HERE.