Ferrari AF Corse’s Nicklas Nielsen took the lead Sunday (Sept. 6) with 12 minutes to go when Toyota Racing’s Nyck de Vries lost his hydraulic pressure and ran off the track. From there, Nielsen was able to hold on to win the FIA World Endurance Championship Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas with teammates Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina. It is the trio’s first win of the year.
“I think the whole race was rather dramatic and chaotic from our side,” Nielsen said after the race. “We definitely did not expect to end up winning today. For a while, I think we were settling for P2. We were a bit lucky that the Toyota had a problem.”
The No. 50 Ferrari’s margin of victory was 4.471 seconds over Cadillac Herta Team JOTA’s Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and Sebastien Bourdais. Signatech Alpine’s Antonio Felix da Costa, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi actually finished second on the road, but were penalized five seconds due to an unsafe release on their final pit stop.
The penalty dropped the No. 35 Alpine to third. The Heart of Racing’s Tom Gamble and Harry Tincknell were fourth, while the No. 36 Alpine of Jules Gounon, Frederic Makowiecki and Victor Martins was fifth.
In Hyperpole qualifying Saturday, Ferrari AF Corse’s Antonio Giovinazzi and Aitken qualified with the same time. By virtue of Giovinazzi setting the time first, he got to start from pole.
Rain earlier in the day meant that the track was partially wet at the start, especially at the turns 16-18 complex around the tower. With the hot weather in Austin, officials made the decision to start behind the safety car. Most of the field started on slicks due to the track drying so fast, but the track was not completely dry before the green came out.
When the green flew, Giovinazzi was able to open up a decent gap over Aitken. This advantage held until the first round of stops, where a recent rule change mandating a drop in energy capacity resulted in a split strategy.
Giovinazzi took full service while Molina and Toyota Racing’s Sebastien Buemi took short stops to get up front. Once the second round of stops was completed, the No. 51 Ferrari ended up back in the lead.
They stayed there until they had issues on their third stop that cost them 25 seconds. That dropped the team out of the top-five. They would never recover and finished 11th, out of the points.
Just before the halfway point, a virtual safety car came out due to issues with debris and the turf at the exit of turn 20. That resulted in the entire field stopping to get on the same strategy. At the same time, it began to rain lightly again. This rain was not heavy enough for teams to switch to wet tires.
The round of stops put Bamber into the overall lead with Gounon giving chase. Eventually, Gounon dropped back, bringing his teammate da Costa and de Vries into contention.
A four-car duel for the lead erupted that ended with 140 minutes to go when de Vries passed Bamber for the lead. Once out front, de Vries was able to pull out a couple of seconds over the pack.
Kamui Kobayashi got in the car and did a stint where he maintained the advantage, then de Vries got back in the car. On a day where it got up to 97°, de Vries drove the better part of two-thirds of the race by himself.
The race was put under the safety car with just over an hour to go due to debris. The No. 78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus managed to lose their hood twice. The first time saw it blow off on the backstretch. Despite bonding the replacement hood to the rest of the car with barebond, the new one came off as well.
That put Milesi right on de Vries’ tail for the final 45 minute stretch run. He was able to keep pace for a while, but ran wide in the Esses. That allowed Nielsen to move up to second.
Everything was looking go for de Vries until the closing minutes. De Vries indicated on the radio that he lost hydraulic pressure in his Toyota. As a result, he went straight at turn 11, unable to turn his car.
That allowed Nielsen to take the overall lead. Meanwhile, de Vries was pulled into the garage and ended up with a DNF.
In LMGT3, The Heart of Racing’s Gray Newell started from pole in his Aston Martin. However, he immediately came under pressure from Proton Competition’s Eric Powell. Powell moved up from fourth on the grid to take the lead from Newell under braking for turn 12.
Powell’s teammate Stefano Gattuso quickly moved up the order from 10th on the grid. By the third lap under green, he was already up to second.
Further back, Team WRT’s Anthony McIntosh was hit by Akkodis ASP Team’s Tom van Rompuy in turn 12, cutting the BMW’s left rear tire. By the time he got back to the pits, the car had filled up with smoke.
At the same time that this happened, the race’s first full course yellow came out when TF Sport’s Ben Keating spun in turn 1 after contact from Vista AF Corse’s Thomas Flohr. Keating was able to resume, but fluids that were dropped brought out the yellow.
Later on, Gattuso was able to take the class lead away. However, contact damaged the nose of his Mustang, leading to a long pit stop. This happened immediately prior to the race’s second full course yellow for debris.
A number of drivers failed to slow down in time for the yellow to the mandatory 80 kph. Powell got the lead back slowing for the yellow, but he got dinged for not slowing fast enough and had to serve a drive-through penalty.
That gave the advantage to Manthey Racing’s James Cottingham. Despite pressing his luck with the inner curbs, he was able to hold onto the advantage.
As the race continued on, The Heart of Racing’s No. 27 with Zacharie Robichon driving was able to get back to the front. Robichon, along with teammates Mattia Drudi and Ian James, were able to control the second half of the race to take their first win of the year.
Drudi, James and Robichon’s margin of victory was 5.007 seconds over Manthey Racing’s Cottingham, Timur Boguslavkiy and Ayhancan Guven. The second Aston Martin of Newell, Eduardo Barrichello and Jonny Adam was third, then Vista AF Corse’s Francois Heriau, Simon Mann and Alessio Rovera. Powell, Sebastian Priaulx and Ben Tuck recovered from their early penalty to finish fifth.
FIA World Endurance Championship Lone Star Le Mans Unofficial Results
Next up for the WEC is the 6 Hours of Fuji at Fuji Speedway. That race will be Sept. 27. Due to the 13-hour time difference between Japan and Eastern Time, coverage will air starting at 10 p.m. ET Sept. 26 on HBO Max.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the Frontstretch email newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the Frontstretch Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
A name and email address are required to post a comment. The email address is not publicly visible or shared. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated according to our comment policy.
Comments are listed in order from oldest to newest. Leave a comment