Riberas: Heart of Racing Ran ‘Dream Race’ at COTA

Heart of Racing Team’s LMGT3 class win in the Lone Star Le Mans was “one of those dream races” according to Alex Riberas, who described remaining “ahead of all potential mistakes” as key to the team’s dominant victory.

The No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo crossed the line by a margin of 20.538 seconds over the No. 92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R in Sunday’s six-hour FIA World Endurance Championship round at Circuit of The Americas.

It marked a first WEC victory for the team, as well as for Riberas, Ian James and Daniel Mancinelli and Aston Martin’s updated GT3 challenger.

The win also brings the British marque’s total tally of world championship wins at the Austin circuit to ten, adding to previous success in GTE-Pro and GTE-Am.

“One of those dream races, really,” Riberas told Sportscar365. “That’s what you prepare for when you start the season. That’s how you dream about a race unfolding.

“However, it just never happens, right? You always face setbacks and unexpected difficulties. But today, we didn’t.

“Today, every pit stop was flawless. The strategy was good. The tires performed perfectly.

“We were always in the right window with the tire pressures and the tire temperatures and the whole car just performed really well throughout the whole race.

“We didn’t have any contact. We didn’t have any track limits.”

The topic of track limits was particularly prevalent during the race, with multiple teams across both classes receiving warnings and penalties for exceeding them.

“We talked about that a lot in the beginning of the race,” said Riberas. “If you have traffic, if you have prototypes, just make sure you adapt to that.

“When you lose downforce, it’s very easy to run wide and do the track limit. So you have to be proactive, but that’s much easier said than done.

“And today, we somehow managed to be ahead of all of the potential mistakes and we didn’t do any. So that’s why we got the win.”

While Bronze-rated James laid the foundation for the win, he did so while coming under pressure from the No. 85 Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 early on.

However, the Lamborghini was taken out of contention after Rahel Frey clashed with the No. 81 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Rui Andrade at Turn 15, which Riberas described as a “key moment” in the LMGT3 battle.

“We were definitely looking to fight against, especially, I would say, the Lambo and the 81 Corvette,” he said.

“Those two cars were very similar to us, but then when the Lambo and the Corvette had the contact and the Lambo had to come into the box, that was the key moment of the race.

“That’s when we grew that gap. Then all of a sudden, the entire race was a bit different.

“And for sure, when you jump into the car, even though there was still like two and a half hours left, but when you have that margin, it makes everything a lot easier.”