Algarve Pro Wins Rain-Shortened Second Sepang Race

Algarve Pro Racing trio Michael Jensen, Malthe Jakobsen and Valerio Rinicella took victory in a rain-shortened second race of the Asian Le Mans Series season-opening 4 Hours of Sepang double-header on Sunday.

Amid rapidly-changing conditions at the Malaysian track, the No. 25 APR Oreca 07 Gibson of Jakobsen was more than 20 seconds clear of the chasing pack when a safety car was called with 56 minutes left on the clock due to the worsening weather.

The race was then red-flagged with 47 minutes to go, before being abandoned entirely with 15 minutes left and no prospect of conditions improving.

Jakobsen first powered into the lead after APR elected to send the Danish driver out on slick tires for what proved to be the final restart of the race with around 90 minutes left, which allowed him to make short work of his wet-shod rivals.

The Peugeot Hypercar racer picked off Laurents Hoerr in the DKR Engineering Oreca to lead with an hour and 15 minutes remaining, and subsequently pulled out a 12-second gap over the similarly slick-shod No. 22 Proton Competition car of Tom Dillmann.

However, it wasn’t long before more rain arrived and wets were the order of the day again, with APR bringing in Jakobsen and sending him out with the net lead in tact.

With the race being halted not long after, it gave both Jensen, stepping up from LMP3 competition, and single-seater convert Rinicella their first LMP2 wins.

Dillmann opted to continue for another lap on an increasingly wet track, and lost further ground with a slow pit stop, slipping to fourth.

That paved the way for the Saturday race-winning RD Limited Oreca of Tristan Vautier to move into second, as a slightly earlier change from slicks to wets gave the No. 30 car that Vautier shares with James Allen and Fred Poordad an advantage.

Completing the podium was the second of the APR cars of Alex Quinn, Olli Caldwell and Kriton Lentoudis, despite an early trip through the gravel for the last-named.

The pole-winning No. 22 Proton car of Dillmann, Vlad Lomko and Giorgio Roda was fourth ahead of the Nielsen Racing car of Nicky Catsburg, Naveen Rao and Matt Bell.

Those cars that initially fared well on wet tires on a drying track at the final restart were forced into making additional stops for slicks, only to then have to stop again for wets as the rain returned just a short time later.

Among them was the Pure Rxcing Oreca that had led at that juncture in the hands of Louis Deletraz but ended up eighth at the finish ahead of the DKR car, which also enjoyed a brief spell in the lead with Hoerr at the wheel.

Ulimate Doubles Up in LMP3, Winward Snatches GT Win

In the LMP3 class, it was the No. 35 Ultimate Ligier JS P320 Nissan of Matteo Quintarelli, Bence Valint and Stephane Lemeret that came through for a second victory in two races, Quintarelli ending up two minutes and 27 seconds clear at the finish.

The battle for second was much more closely fought as High Class Racing’s Anders Fjordbach battled his opposite number at RLR Msport, Ian Aguilera as the rain worsened.

In the end, Fjordbach hung on to the place in the No. 49 car he shares with Mark Patterson and Seth Lucas, while Aguilera and his teammates Nick Adcock and James Dayson had to be content with the final spot on the podium.

Victory in GT went the way of the No. 81 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Jules Gounon, Gabriele Piana and Rinat Salhikov.

That was after a late stop in the rain for another of the Mercedes-AMG crews, the No. 2 Climax Racing car of Ralf Aron, while leading the race.

Prior to the rain shower, Aron had held a seven-second advantage over the No. 87 Origine Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R, which was another car to stop in the closing stages as Leo Ye Hongli came in to hand over to Laurin Heinrich.

Two other cars that hung on without stopping completed the podium, the No. 10 Manthey Porsche of Antares Au, Joel Sturm and Klaus Bachler, and the No. 28 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 of Manny Franco, Massimiliano Wiser and Davide Rigon.

Aron and his teammates in the No. 2 Climax Mercedes-AMG, Elias Seppanen and Bihuang Zhou, had to be content with fourth ahead of the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari of Cedric Sbirrazzouli, Riccardo Agostini and Custodio Toledo, with the Origine Porsche sixth.

Saturday’s class-winning team CarGuy Racing saw any hopes of a double evaporate when Yudai Uchida’s No. 57 Ferrari made contact early in the race with the Prime Speed Sport Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Heremana Malmezac.

RESULTS: 4 Hours of Sepang