The last round of 2015 European Le Mans Series season promises to be exciting and interesting for more than one reason. Besides LMP3, all the championship titles are still to be decided and there will be all to play for when the cars line up for the start of the final race of the season. Thirty cars will feature the Estoril starting grid on October 18th in Portugal.
In the LMP2 class, both Gibson 015S-Nissan of JOTA Sport and Greaves Motorsport arrive in Portugal with just one point separating them and both teams are determined to fight for the tile. The N°38 car will be in the hands of Simon Dolan, Harry Tincknell and local star Filipe Albuquerque, while the N°41 will be driven by Gary Hirsch, Björn Wirdheim and Jon Lancaster. Third in the championship classification, thanks to a victory in Italy, French team Thiriet by TDS Racing is still the only ORECA 05 on track in ELMS. Currently 10 points behind the championship leaders they are still able to lift the 2015 title and for the final round Pierre Thiriet and Ludovic Badey will be joined by 2015 Le Mans LMP2 winner Nicolas Lapierre as Tristan Gommendy is racing elsewhere. The French trio will definitely fight all the way to the chequered flag on Sunday afternoon.
Russian team AF Racing is once again running a pair of Nissan powered BR01s. Maurizio Mediani, David Markosov and Nicolas Minassian will share the n°20 car, while the n°21, which finished on the podium at Le Castellet, is allocated to Mikhail Aleshin, Kirill Ladygin and Victor Shaytar. The one and only team racing under the Portuguese flag in Estoril will be the n°25 of Algarve Pro Racing Ligier JS P2 Nissan, for Michael Munemann, James Winslow and Italian Andrea Roda. The second Ligier JS P2, featuring the only Judd engine on the grid, is the n°40 Krohn Racing which will be in the hands of Tracy Krohn, Niclas Jonsson and, once again, WEC race winner Olivier Pla.
After scoring just one podium finish in 2015 and two DNFs, Nathanël Berthon, Mark Patterson and Michael Lyons are determined to return to the podium in Portugal and finish 2015 on a high note at the wheel of n°48 Murphy Prototypes ORECA 03R.
The last open top ORECA on track in Estoril will be the Eurasia Motorsport’s car for Pu Jun Jin, Nico Pieter de Brujn, with a third driver yet to be confirmed. The sole Morgan of the field is Pegasus Racing, which will be driven by Léo Roussel, David Cheng and a third driver to be announced.
The LMP3 Championship title has been attributed to n°3 Team LNT car of Chris Hoy and Charlie Robertson at the last 4 Hours of Le Castellet event, but both cars (with n°2) will be present in Estoril to celebrate with Gaëtan Paletou and Michael Simpson aiming for a better race as they were forced to retire after mechanical problems. SVK by Speed Factory is second in the championship, and aiming to finish the ELMS season as Vice Champions with the n°15 Ginetta for Konstantin Calko, Spanish driver Jesus Fuster and Dainius Matijosaitis. Villorba Corse stepped on the podium of the last two races and Roberto Lacorte and Giorgio Sernagiotto are aiming to finish well to take the best possible place on the overall 2015 classification.
The Ligier JP P3 will make its European Le Mans Series debut in Estoril, joining the four Ginettas on the Estoril grid. The Graff Racing team are entering the n°9 Nissan powered LMP3 Ligier for French drivers Eric Trouillet and Thomas Accary and Britain’s Gary Findlay.
Five Ferrari 458 Italia, two Porsche 911 RSR, one BMW Z4 and one Aston Martin will make up the LMGTE grid in Estoril. The N°6o Ferrari 458 run by Formula Racing and drivers Johnny Laursen, Mikkel Mac and Andrea Rizzoli are leading the class championship with 19 points ahead of the n°52 BMW Z4 of BMW Team Marc VDS and its drivers Andy Priaulx, Henry Hassid and Jesse Krohn. With a maximum of 26 points available in Portugal, the 19 point gap is comfortable, but with six cars still mathematically able to take the LMGTE title, anything can still happen in the title chase which is not over until the chequered flag is waved.
With 22 points separating them from the leading Ferrari Duncan Cameron, Matt Griffin and Aaron Scott can also still fight for the title at the wheel of n°55 AF Corse Ferrari and so can n°88 Porsche of Proton Competition of Richard Leitz, Sebastian Asch and Christian Ried, who are one point behind the AF Corse trio. Another 458 that is in the fight is the N°66 JMW Motorsport in which WEC Ferrari works driver James Calado will be joining Robert Smith and Rory Butcher.
The final of the six cars still in with a chance is the n°56 AT Racing Ferrari, which is currently 26 points behind the Formula Racing crew. In order to win the class, the Austrian team’s Ferrari would have to win the race and take the pole position without any points for the other teams, so mathematically speaking, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Alexander Talkanitsa father & son have a slim chance but it is still a possibility.
Gulf Racing will feature the Porsche 911 RSR n°86 for Michael Wainwright, Adam Caroll and Daniel Brown in Estoril and Peter Mann, Raffaelle Giammaria and Matteo Cressoni will drive n°51 AF Corse Ferrari 458. The LMGTE grid will feature a new entry from Aston Martin Racing, who will enter a Vantage V8 for newly crowned British GT champions Andrew Howard and Jonny Adam.
The 2015 ELMS championship title is also still to be decided in the GTC category with French team TDS Racing and French trio Franck Perera, Dino Lunardi and Eric Dermont leading with 82 points accumulated at the wheel of n°59 BMW Z4 GT3. However the French team know they will have to push all the way to final lap as the n°62 AF Corse Ferrari of Francesco Castellacci, Stuart Hall and Thomas Flohr are only 13 points behind them after scoring two wins and a 2nd place in the last three races.
Both the AF Corse n°64 and n°63 Ferraris driven by Mads Rasmussen / Felipe Barreiros / Francisco Guedes and Giorgio Roda / Ilya Melnokov /Marco Cioci are out of the running for the GTC title but will still be pushing for the elusive first win of 2015.
For the first time this year the all Danish driver line up of the no68 Massive Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT3 will not be the only representative of the British marque in the GTC category as they will be joined by a new team from the UK, TF Sport. At the wheel of n°77 Aston Martin Vantage will be Turkish driver Salih Yoluc, Britain’s Euan Hankey and World Endurance Championship race winner Richie Stanaway from New Zealand.
Rendez-vous with the ELMS competitors for the 4 Hours of Estoril on Sunday October 18th will be the venue for an exciting climax to the 2015 season.