Barcelona, Spain, August 29th - The summer recess ended early for the European Le Mans Series field, as on-track action resumed in Barcelona this weekend at round three of the championship.
The guys at Panis Racing and Cool Racing, the two Elf-backed teams, had clearly not spent all of their summer on the beach, however. In fact, they had obviously been working hard, preparing to come back stronger than ever before. Their performances in qualifying certainly confirmed this: Nico Jamin took pole position in Panis Racing’s no.65 Oreca Gibson whilst Yifei Ye, the defending LMP2 champion and Cool Racing driver, finished just behind, missing out on second position by only 0.097s. The two Elf-backed outfits looked set to challenge for the podium places.
In the race itself, the two crews – Nico Jamin, Julien Canal and Job Van Uitert for Panis Racing and Yifei Ye, Nicolas Lapierre and Nicklas Krütten for Cool Racing – did not disappoint, providing some superb on-track action, but they were both beaten to the race win by the impressive form of Ferdinand Habsburg, Louis Delétraz et Lorenzo Colombo. Panis Racing nonetheless finished as runners-up, the team’s third podium this year after Le Castellet (3rd) and Monza (2nd), whilst Cool Racing grabbed its second podium finish of the season in third position to go with the third place it secured in Imola.
Good results that might have been better still had it not been for the penalties handed to both teams for infringements committed during refuelling pit stops. Cool Racing also enjoyed further success during the weekend as Smith, Benham and Jakobsen took third place in the LMP3 class, after starting from pole position. The ELMS field now heads to Spa-Francorchamps on 25 September for the penultimate round of the season, which looks set to provide another exciting weekend of racing.
Panis Racing now moves into second place in the overall standings thanks to this new podium and still has a chance of winning the title, as does its drivers, whilst Cool Racing and its crew now lie fifth in their respective championships.
