Inter Europol Scores Back-to-Back LMP2 Victories

Inter Europol Competition scored a second consecutive victory in the LMP2 class of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, earning a 1-2 class result headed up by the No. 43 crew of Tom Dillmann, Kuba Smiechowski and Nick Yelloly.

The Polish outfit brought home its pair of Oreca 07 Gibsons at the top of the order after a typically close-fought battle for class honors that also involved the Duqueine Team and Forestier Racing by Panis at various points.

Leading at halfway was the No. 30 Duqueine Oreca, which had both the pace and fuel economy to match both Inter Europol cars, and the race looked poised to be a three-way battle between that car and the No. 43 and No. 343 Inter Europol machines.

That was until Richard Verschoor suffered a sudden brake failure on the Mulsanne Straight just after he had taken the car over from Porsche factory driver Julien Andlauer, which spelled an end to the hopes of the crew that also included Doriane Pin.

After the second safety car of the race, the No. 29 Forestier Racing by Panis machine in which Esteban Masson was at the wheel came back into the picture for the lead battle, having earlier virtually dropped out of contention in the evening hours.

Toyota junior driver Masson even passed Nico Mueller’s No. 343 car for second, not long after the Swiss driver conceded the lead to the sister car of Dillmann, but an offset in fuel strategies meant the No. 29 machine had to make an additional stop.

The upshot was that Dillmann crossed the line with 28 seconds in hand over the sister car that Mueller had driven together with Reshad de Gerus and Bijoy Garg, although the No. 43 car ended up being classified a lap ahead of the No. 343

It marked Inter Europol’s third LMP2 triumph at Le Mans in the last four editions, with Smiechowski claiming his third win, having been part of the crew that scored the team’s first win in 2023, and Dillmann and Yelloly both picking up their second.

Masson in the end had to settle for third in the car shared with Ollie Gray and Le Mans debutant Louis Rousset, 13 seconds behind the second-placed car.

Completing the top five were the other only lead-lap finishers in class, the No. 26 Vector Sport car of Pietro Fittipaldi, Vlad Lomko and Ryan Cullen and the No. 37 CLX Motorsport entry of 19-year-olds Adrien Closmesnil, Theodor Jensen and Ian Aguilera.

The class pole-sitting No. 28 IDEC Sport Oreca appeared to be among the contenders in the early part of the race but lost ground in the evening hours and had to settle for sixth and a lap down with Job van Uitert, Valerio Rinicella and Paul Lafargue.

CrowdStrike by APR Takes LMP2 Pro-Am Class Honors

LMP2 Pro-Am honors went to the No. 4 CrowdStrike Racing by APR car shared by George Kurtz, Laurin Heinrich and Alex Quinn that was seventh amongst the LMP2 field.

The first half of the race was controlled by the No. 99 AO by TF Oreca, but that car dropped down the order when Dane Cameron suffered an off at Indianapolis with a little over nine hours remaining in the car he shared with PJ Hyett and James Allen.

Around an hour later, Kevin Estre suffered an incident of his own at the same corner aboard the No. 14 TDS Racing car, ending any realistic hopes of he and co-drivers Mathias Beche and Tobias Lutke coming through for sub-class honors.

Those incidents helped the No. 183 AF Corse car of Francois Perrodo, Ben Barnicoat and Matthieu Vaxiviere recover to second in Pro-Am, while the podium was completed by the ‘Rockie the Pegasus’-themed AO by TF machine.

Remarkably, 17 of the 18 starters in the class were classified finishers.

Besides the Duqueine car, the only other LMP2 entries to suffer significant delays were the No. 3 DKR Engineering car that lost multiple laps for suspension repairs after early contact for Sebastian Alvarez, and the No. 24 Nielsen Racing entry that took a lengthy trip to the pits inside the final two hours for a broken gearbox compressor cooler.

RESULTS: 24 Hours of Le Mans