ELMS victories at Paul Ricard for Dragonspeed, Ultimate, Luzich Racing

The 2019 season of the European Le Mans Series started at the Circuit Paul Ricard with the 4 Hours of Le Castellet. The first win of the season went to Ben Hanley, Henrik Hedman and James Allen in the #21 Dragonspeed Oreca 07-Gibson LMP2 prototype.

After four hour of racing and 135 completed laps, Ben Hanley crossed the finish line 16.655 seconds ahead of Paul Loup Chatin in the #28 IDEC Sport Oreca. Chatin was sharing a car with Paul Lafargue and Memo Rojas. Richard Bradley, Nico Jamin and Pierre Ragues completed the podium after finishing third in the #30 Duqueine Engineering Oreca.

Victorious car in the LMP3 class

The LMP3 class victory went to the #17 Ultimate Norma M30 of Mathieu Lahaye, Jean-Baptiste Lahaye and Francois Heriau. It’s the first ELMS victory for the French team.

The closest rivals were Mikkel Jensen and Jens Petersen in the #11 Eurointernational Ligier, finishing the race one lap down to the winners. Inter Europol Competition took the third podium spot with Martin Hippe and Nigel Moore in the #13 Ligier.

Luzich Racing’s #51 Ferrari 488 GTE

The best LMGTE class team was Luzich Racing with reigning FIA WEC GTE champion Alessandro Pier Guidi sharing the #51 Ferrari 488 GTE with Fabien Lavergne and Nicklas Nielsen.

One more Ferrari crew joined them on a podium, the all-female crew of Kessel Racing – Michelle Gatting, Rahel Frey and Manuela Gostner. The #77 Porsche 911 RSR of Dempsey-Proton Racing finished in the third place, driven by Matteo Cairoli, Christian Ried and Riccardo Pera.