Breakthrough Victory For Inter Europol In LMP2

Inter Europol Competition started endurance racing in 2016. By 2019 the foundation had been set via multiple LMP3 class accolades, and earlier this year in the Asian Le Mans Series, the team owned by the baked goods company in Warsaw, Poland, won its first LMP2 race.

But nothing they’ve achieved so far compares to this: A sensational win in the LMP2 class at the 91st annual 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Owner/driver Jakub Smiechowski, Albert Costa, and the hero of the race, Fabio Scherer, took control one quarter into the race and then led most of the way home.

The story of the LMP2 winner is intertwined with the winner’s story in GTE Am, of course – because early in the race, the #33 Corvette Racing C8.R ran over the foot of Scherer.

“When I started the race I thought it was over after 15 minutes, because my foot hurt so much,” Scherer recalls.

“But with a lot of treatment, I was able to race. The adrenaline kicked in and I was in the flow. Now I start to feel my foot more and more but it doesn’t matter.”

Despite the pain, he took the car home, fended off a final-hour chase from behind, and contributed to the biggest win that Inter Europol Competition has ever claimed.

“To win Le Mans means everything – I don’t care if I can’t walk out of here!” exclaimed the Swiss driver.

Inter Europol’s team is the only full-season entrant in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s outgoing LMP2 category, which does not have a connection to a current or existing Le Mans Hypercar or LMDh programme. But they’re on a roll against the other, more-resourced teams in their class.

“After our podium at Spa, I thought Le Mans was still too big for us,” said Costa after the race. “But it happened and I am lost for words. I was always following this race when I was younger. So to do it in my first attempt, to win this, is all I can say. It’s amazing.” Costa’s win on debut might give his former employers at Lamborghini something to consider as their Hypercar programme gets online.

The #41 Team WRT Oreca 07-Gibson of Rui Andrade, Louis Deletraz, and Robert Kubica finished a close second, 21 seconds in arrears. It was a second straight runner-up finish for Deletraz and Kubica.

Deletraz was gaining on Scherer in the final hour, but after the final round of pit stops, the pursuit came to an end and the WRT crew conceded its runner-up spot.

Third in class was the #30 Team Duqueine car of Neel Jani, Rene Binder, and Nico Pino, which emerged in the frame for a podium in the second half of the race and ran a relatively trouble-free race – giving the young Chilean Pino a debut podium, and rekindling some of the old form that made Jani a force in the Porsche 919 Hybrids of yesteryear.

WRT almost got two cars on the podium but the #31 of Sean Gelael, Ferdinand Habsburg, and Robin Frijns’ fuel gamble in the last hour came up short and a change of nose also resigned them to concede the podium position. But to finish fifth, after sliding off the road in Saturday afternoon’s awful downpour, they were fortunate and fortuitous.

They finished behind Alpine Elf Team’s #36 car, in fourth, while the #35 finished ninth even after Memo Rojas’ unusual collision in the middle of the night that ultimately took the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID out of the race.

Paul Loup Chatin won the pole in the #48 IDEC Sport car, and it was running well for most of the race – up in the podium positions, until there were two hours to go and Laurents Horr suffered a puncture that took them out of the podium hunt and down to sixth at the end.

Vector Sport’s #10 Oreca had a quiet time in seventh, while the #23 United Autosports Oreca finished eighth despite a scary overnight crash. Tom Blomqvist reportedly lost his brakes and hit hard enough to trip the medical light in his car. But the Anglo-Swedish driver was okay, and he, Oliver Jarvis, and youngster Josh Pierson came back to a solid result.

Tenth place out of all the LMP2s, and winner of the LMP2 Pro-Am class for the second year in a row at Le Mans, was Algarve Pro Racing.

The alliance of Algarve Pro and CrowdStrike Racing, formed in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, came to Le Mans and survived the attrition which afflicted so many of the other Pro-Am sub-class runners.

George Kurtz was able to take a class win on his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a gentleman driver. Colin Braun made the best of his first start in the race in 16 years, and James Allen was able to pay back the team that he denied a victory earlier this year at Daytona.

Overall the contest for the Pro/Am victory was decided by incidents rather than on-track battles. Of the nine cars that took the start, five of them retired, including the No. 80 AF Corse crew of Francois Perrodo, Ben Barnicoat and Norman Nato that looked set to run away with the subclass honours before Barnicoat crashed out at the Porsche Curves after sunrise on Sunday morning.

LMP2 as a whole was strewn with early casualties, beginning with Rodrigo Sales’ big hit after the first corner where he hit hard enough to tear the front-right quarter panel off the Nielsen Racing #14. Just a few minutes later, Ricky Taylor crashed out aboard the Tower Motorsports #13 to bring the Tower/TDS Racing team’s miserable weekend to an early end.

There was a bizarre crash in the rain where Salih Yoluc lost control of his Racing Team Turkey Oreca and hit the #9 Prema car of Filip Ugran which was already stopped in the runoff at Indianapolis. The impact could have been far, far worse – but it did prove to be the end of the #923 car’s race, which came into the weekend as a potential dark horse favourite for the outright LMP2 win, not just the Pro-Am trophy.

Prema had a tough race from start to finish, made tougher when Daniil Kvyat wiped out in the Porsche Curves, ending the #63 car’s race.