“I think the start was the toughest part of the whole race,” Neel Jani told the post-race press conference. “It was a big fight with the Muscle Milk car on my tail. They got us in the pit stop, so I thought, ‘I will just run my race in traffic and do my speed.’ It looked like he made a bad move in traffic and we got around them.”
“The track is very different, you pay the price for any error,” explained Nicolas Prost. The walls are much closer, you go off here and it’s against the wall. It is a risk taking thing in the traffic. Success is about how much risk do you want to take, the answer to the question today was not too much.”
Unfortunately the anticipated battle between the race’s P1 titans failed to materialize, as the Muscle Milk Pickett Racing HPD-Honda lost an hour in the pits repairing damage from collision after only an hour of racing. The team still won the ALMS P1 championship, as its main competition, the #16 Dyson Racing Lola-Mazda hybrid, lost even more time with electrical and other problems.
Scott Tucker, Luis Diaz, and Christophe Bouchut won both the P2 class of the race and the ALMS P2 championship with their second-place finish. Level 5’s toughest competition, Conquest Endurance, finished third, only eight seconds behind the Level 5 car. The Conquest entry was later disqualified because one of the team’s drivers exceeded the maximum driving timet.
Thiriet by TDS Racing finished fifth overall, earning enough points to win the ELMS championship. The Thiriet Oreca-Nissan, driven by Mathias Beche, Pierre Thiriet, and Christophe Tinseau, was the best finisher among the European P2 teams
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