VDS Panis Takes Title With Dominant 4H Portimao Win

VDS Panis Racing were crowned champions in the European Le Mans Series as Ollie Gray, Esteban Masson and Charles Milesi took a commanding victory to seal the title in the 4 Hours of Portimao season finale.

The No. 48 Oreca 07 Gibson entered the deciding round leading a three-way title battle with IDEC Sport and Inter Europol Competition, but Gray, Masson and Milesi broke through in dominant fashion to take a third win of the season.

Gray, who took the start, captured the race lead from the polesitting No. 9 Iron Lynx-Proton Oreca of Jonas Ried within the opening 20 minutes coming out of an early Full Course Yellow for debris on track.

After that, the No. 48 machine remained largely unchallenged for the remainder of the contest, coming home with a margin of 5.528 seconds over the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition machine of Kuba Smiechowski, Nick Yelloly and Tom Dillmann.

By winning the title, it marks the first time that the Olivier Panis-led squad won the LMP2 title in ELMS, succeeding AO by TF in the process.

The overall podium was completed by the No. 18 IDEC Sport Oreca of Jamie Chadwick, Daniel Juncadella and Mathys Jaubert, followed by the sister car piloted by Paul Lafargue, Paul-Loup Chatin and Job van Uitert.

In fifth overall, TDS Racing captured the LMP2 Pro-Am victory with its No. 29 Oreca in the hands of Rodrigo Sales, Clement Novalak and Mathias Beche, although AO by TF beat Algarve Pro Racing to the title in dramatic fashion.

APR’s No. 20 Oreca of Kriton Lentoudis, Alex Quinn and Olli Caldwell entered the finale with a nine-point advantage, but had their run derailed when the car went into the garage after contact with the No. 63 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo in the third hour.

Although the car did rejoin the race, it dropped to the tail of the LMP2 Pro-Am field, handing the championship advantage to the Spike the Dragon-liveried machine of PJ Hyett, Dane Cameron and Louis Deletraz.

By coming home second in class behind TDS, AO by TF captured the title, resulting in back-to-back titles after the Tom Ferrier-led squad won the overall LMP2 title last year.

Notably, for Hyett and Cameron, it marked their second championship in the span of a week, as the pairing won the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship LMP2 title at Motul Petit Le Mans last weekend.

Deletraz, for his part, continued his remarkable championship record in ELMS with a fourth title in five years, adding to overall championships with Team WRT (2021), Prema Racing (2022) and AO by TF (2024).

CLX Motorsport Dominates LMP3, TF Takes LMGT3 Title

In the LMP3 category, CLX Motorsport capped off a dominant title-winning season with a lights-to-flag run with their No. 17 Ligier JS P320 Toyota.

Adrien Closmenil, Paul Lanchere and Theodor Jensen had already clinched the championship in class last time out at Silverstone and came through to convert pole position to take a fifth win from six races.

Only a retirement during the fourth round at Spa-Francorchamps prevented the crew from completing a perfect season.

In the LMGT3 category, TF Sport took the championship in class by capturing a deciding class victory with its No. 82 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Hiroshi Koizumi, Rui Andrade and Charlie Eastwood.

Koizumi started the race from pole but lost out early on to Racing Spirit of Leman’s Clement Mateu, only to regain the lead by fighting back past the No. 10 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo at the end of the opening hour.

From there, the silver-liveried Corvette ran at the head of the field for the remainder of the contest, although the No. 50 Richard Mille AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 took a punt at victory by inserting its Pro driver Riccardo Agostini earlier than the other cars in class.

Although that promoted the car to the front of the class, it put the car off sequence, requiring a fuel splash that dropped it to eighth.

The points loss opened the door for TF Sport to leap from third to first place in the standings as the win promoted Koizumi, Andrade and Eastwood to the top of the class.

Eastwood withstood pressure from the No. 23 United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Wayne Boyd, Michael Birch and Garnet Patterson to claim the decisive victory.

The No. 85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 GT3 R of Celia Martin, Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting completed the podium in class.

RESULTS: 4 Hours of Portimao