ELMS teams hold their heads up high at the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2013

At this year's 24 Hours, a quarter of the field came directly from the ELMS, most of which were in LMP2 (16 cars/15 teams, see story here).  In LMP2, 8 of the 10 teams finished the race, the sole LMGTE entry from ELMS took the chequered flag and four of the five LMGTE Am cars were classified at the close of the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans event. 

LMP2: Greaves Motorsport entered two Zytek Z11SN Nissans, the No.42 coming from the ELMS.  This entry achieved the best result of all the ELMS entries, finishing at the foot of the LMP2 podium (release here), and promoted to 3rd in the classification post-race after the No.26 was excluded from the results).  Michael Krumm, Jann Mardenborough and Lucas Ordonez drove the Zytek-Nissan into the ‘Top Ten' overall, 21 laps behind the winning Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Loic Duval.

Morand Racing took part in their first 24 Hours of Le Mans with the driver line-up of Franck Mailleux, Natacha Gachnang and Olivier Lombard, and the Swiss team fulfilled their objective of finishing, being classified 12th overall and 6th in the LMP2 class.  Team owners, Benoît Morand and Joe Genoud, were very proud of their drivers' performance and their team (see release here).

While the early part of their race was disrupted by the conditions and some technical problems, the Murphy Prototypes ORECA 03 Nissan came through to finish third best of the ELMS entries, 13th place overall and 7th in LMP2.  Greg Murphy's Irish team couldn't hide their delight at completing this punishing race (release here), benefitting from the driving talents of Simon Dolan, Oliver Turvey and Lucas Luhr in this 81st edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Starting from 10th place and on the fifth row of the grid, the Jota Sport Zytek Z11SN Nissan were having a great race and were potential LMP2 podium finishers until 7 o'clock on Sunday morning.  After suffering front suspension failure, Luhr had to nurse the car back to the pits to allow the mechanics to carry out the necessary repairs.  After a stop of more than 20 minutes, Jota set off again but had lost all their earlier advantage and finished up 14th overall and 4th in class (release here).

Signatech Alpine fulfilled its main objective which was to put the name of Alpine back at the heart of the greatest endurance race in the world.  Tristan Gommendy, Nelson Panciatici and Pierre Ragues raced the Alpine A450 to the finish of what would be a difficult and challenging race for all.  In spite of several pit stops for technical reasons, Signatech Alpine finished the event 9th in LMP2 and 15th overall (release here).

The No.34 ORECA 03 Judd of the Race Performance team was in the hands of Michel Frey, Patric Niederhauser and Jeroen Bleekemolen.  Following qualifying sessions which were difficult for everyone, Race Performance nevertheless started from the 10th row of the grid and ended up 10th amongst the LMP2 entrants.

Bousten Ginion Racing had an exceptional race, which will be long-remembered.  At the wheel of the No.40 ORECA 03 Nissan, the Belgian team raced and took the chequered flag with a 100% rookie driver line up.  Thomas Dagoneau, Rodin Younessi and Matt Downs all made their debut at the most famous endurance race in the world and the result was a great reward for this motivated and down-to-earth team (release here).

The No.39 Lola B11/40 Judd of DKR Engineering was driven by the French trio of Olivier Porta, Stéphane Raffin and Romain Brandela.  It started from the 21st row alongside Boutsen Ginion Racing and reached the finish of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 13th of the 22 LMP2 entries in the race.

As far as the Thiriet by TDS Racing team was concerned, it was not motivation which was lacking nor was the ability of the team or drivers at fault, but rather bad luck and bizarre weather conditions.  After a high speed ‘off' during qualifying on Wednesday evening, the ORECA 03 Nissan had to be completely rebuilt.  Two whole days of hard work got the team to warm up and then the race itself.  Although it was holding 12th place overall until an hour before the end of the race, the No.46 entry fell victim to the weather and went off track, negating the considerable efforts of the team (team release here).

HVM Status GP's 24 Hours of Le Mans started well enough when Johnny Mowlem, Jonathan Hirschi and Tony Burgess qualified the Lola B12/80 Judd of the VisitFlorida.com-sponsored team on the 12th row of the grid.  The team was doing well for the first 11 hours of the race until Canadian Tony Burgess went off track at high speed due to the disastrous weather conditions at the track.  The team therefore had to retire from the 24 Hours of Le Mans at 2h30 (release here).