ELMS Austria: Game, Set, Match, Jota!

Jota Sport took a well-deserved first victory of the 2015 European Le Mans Series with a measured drive in a race dogged by Safety Cars. After Harry Tincknell qualified on pole, Filipe Albuquerque twice saw his hard-earned lead eliminated by the intervention of the Safety Car – firstly when Nicolas Minassian spun into the gravel and again for debris strewn across the road by an errant LMP3 – before handing over to Simon Dolan, who crucially fended off the challenge of TDS's Pierre Thiriet and executed a perfect switchback manoeuvre when the Frenchman lunged up the inside at Turn One. Tincknell then took over for the final stint and managed to build an advantage of 13 seconds over Tristan Gommendy before another Safety Car - this time for a shard of carbon fibre at Turn Nine - brought TDS back into play with 40 minutes remaining.

Tincknell was able to close out Jota's first ELMS win of 2015 (Nick Dungan).

While TDS brought Gommendy in for a splash of fuel, Jota left their man out and it appeared as though the pendulum had swung away from them. Tincknell was unable to build a gap big enough to resume ahead of the marauding Gommendy after making his own stop, but it was to prove academic when the TDS man was hit with a stop/go penalty for ignoring the red light at pit exit.

Behind, the action was just as frenetic. A terrific double-stint from Michael Lyons looked to have put Murphy Prototypes in position to take home their second podium in as many races but with just ten minutes to go, Nathaniel Berthon was pinched into a spin by Jesse Krohn’s Marc-VDS BMW, dropping the Irish team to a disappointed sixth. Their misfortune promoted the SMP Racing BR01 of Mikhail Aleshin, Anton and Kirill Ladygin to the rostrum on only the car’s third outing, with the Greaves-Gibson of Gary Hirsch, Bjorn Wirdheim and Jon Lancaster just three seconds adrift after being delayed by two penalties and being held at the end of the pitlane under the Safety Car.

GTE was an equally close affair and only decided on the final lap in the favour of Formula Racing’s Mikkel Mac, Johnny Laursen and Andrea Rizzoli. After a minor fuel irregularity relegated their pole-sitting car to the back of the grid, a storming opening stint from Aaron Scott, a consistent drive from Duncan Cameron and a typically professional stint from Matt Griffin looked to have the no. 55 AF Corse Ferrari in the pound seat, only for Mac to pounce on the final lap with a robust move into Turn 2 that also ensures the no. 60 crew will take the championship lead. Matteo Cressoni, Raffaele Giammaria and Peter Mann completed Ferrari's podium sweep in third, with the Marc-VDS BMW and Proton Competition Porsche rounding out the top five.

AF Corse collected GTC honours after Dermont's mishap (Nick Dungan).

Victory in the GTC class looked to be heading the way of the TDS BMW team until Eric Dermont lost control at turn three, only narrowly avoiding the Pegasus Morgan of Julien Schell. The time lost in the gravel eventually handed victory to the AF Corse trio of Thomas Flohr, Francesco Castellacci and Stuart Hall, with Dermont's team-mate Franck Perera just managing to hold off Kristian Poulsen’s Massive Motorsport Aston Martin for second by a margin of 0.187 seconds.

In LMP3, Charlie Robertson and Sir Chris Hoy put a troublesome Imola weekend behind them with a dominant win, some five laps ahead of Villorba Corse pair Roberto Lacorte and Giorgio Sernagiotto. With only three finishers, GT Academy winners Mark Shulzhitskiy and Gaëtan Paletou completed the podium in a distant third.