Matthieu Vaxiviere, Nicolas Lapierre and Andre Negrao extended their lead in the drivers’ championship with a surprise victory in a thrilling race at Monza, which was decided in controversial circumstances as the leading two cars came to blows with just over an hour to run.
Having taken over the driving duties of the #36 Alpine A480 after the sixth round of pitstops, Vaxiviere quickly dispatched the #8 Toyota GR010 of Ryo Hirakawa and was then able to catch the race leading #7 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi in no time.
The French driver moved alongside Kobayashi after getting a great exit out of Parabolica, but the Toyota driver appeared to close the door as they approached the first chicane, sustaining heavy damage and a puncture to his rear-right tyre.
Kobayashi was forced to limp back to the pits for repairs as the full-course yellow was deployed to remove debris from the track, leaving Vaxiviere in the lead.
Hirakawa was right on the tail of Vaxiviere when the action resumed after a relatively brief FCY, but the Alpine driver pulled away from last month’s Le Mans 24 Hours winner to score Alpine’s first victory in the WEC since the season opener at Sebring.
Hirakawa, Brendon Hartley and Sebastien Buemi trailed 2.7s behind, successfully recovering from an electrical issue that affected the braking of the car until a full power cycle reset was performed in the pits.
Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez were able to bag a healthy bunch of points in third, two laps down on the winning Alpine, despite Kobayashi picking up a hefty 90-second stop/go penalty for his incident with Vaxiviere.
The #7 Toyota claimed the final spot on the podium as the remaining three entrants in the Hypercar class all hit trouble, including the polesitting Glickenhaus.
The American manufacturer looked on course for a maiden WEC win in the first part of the race, following some impressive early stints from Romain Dumas and Pipo Derani, before it all went away from the squad in the third hour.
A drive through penalty and a subsequent safety car appearance eradicated the near-50 second advantage the #708 crew had built, leaving Olivier Pla at the bottom of the Hypercar pack after he took over the driving duties. And Pla got little time to regain lost position as a turbo failure left him with a smoking car, which he brought into the pits for a painful retirement.
Peugeot was never in a position to trouble other hypercar entrants on its return to the top echelon of sportscar racing, with reliability issues compounding the troubles for the French manufacturer.
The #93 9X8 of Jean-Eric Vergne, Paul di Resta and Mikkel Jensen couldn’t even complete 30 minutes of running before it crawled to a halt and continued to run into more issues after returning to power.
The sister #94 car ran trouble-free for the first half of the race but also stopped on track late in the race, with Loic Duval, Gustavo Menezes and James Rossiter eventually finishing 25 laps down on the winning Alpine in fourth place (and 33rd overall).
WRT victorious in LMP2
RealTeam by WRT trio Ferdinand Habsburg, Norman Nato and Rui Andrade beat Jota Sport trio Will Stevens, Antonio Felix da Costa and Roberto Gonzales to win an LMP2 battle that was blown wide open by a safety car in the third hour.
Habsburg had moved the #31 ORECA into the lead at the beginning of the hour, after passing the #22 United Autosports of Filipe Albuquerque at Turn 1.
The second of the two WRT cars dropped down the order after the safety car but was able to circle its way back near the front by the final hour, behind the #38 Jota ORECA that had charged up the order after starting at the back of the entire pack due to an unsafe pit release.
The two cars headed into the pits at the same time for their final pitstops, with quicker work by the Jota crew allowing Habsburg to jump Stevens and claim victory by 12 seconds, while Vector Sport clinched its first podium with Nico Muller, Ryan Cullen and Sebastien Bourdais finishing third in the #10 ORECA.
Several leading LMP2 runners fell out of contention over the course of the race, including the #22 United Autosports car which was hit by mechanical problems and the second Jota car that crashed out late in the race with Jonathan Aberdein at the wheel.
Breakthrough GTE Pro win for Corvette
Corvette's Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy took a surprise victory in GTE Pro after Antonio Fuoco was forced to bring the #52 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo to the pits with just 2m30s to go for a splash and dash.
It marked Corvette’s first victory in the WEC since the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours and the first since it joined the series full-time at the start of the current season.
Fuoco and Miguel Molina had inherited the lead from the pole-sitting sister car of Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado, which was hit with a five-second stop/go penalty in the penultimate hour for failing to transfer data from their car after a pitstop.
Ferrari was seemingly on its way to a victory on its home turf until both its cars had to pit late with just minutes to go in the race, allowing Milner and Tandy to score a popular victory in the #64 C8.R.
Calado and Pier Guidi eventually secured the final spot on the rostrum in third after Pier Guidi emerged on top in a long battle with the #92 Porsche of Kevin Estre.
A drive through penalty for contact with Pier Guidi dropped Estre and Michael Christensen to fourth, ahead of the sister #93 Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Gianmaria Bruni and Frederic Makowiecki.
Harry Tincknell, Sebastian Priaulx and Christian Reid took the top spot in the GTE Am in the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche, denying the all-female #85 Iron Dames Ferrari crew of Michael Gattting, Rahel Frey and Sarah Bovy by timing their pitstop under a FCY.
Third place in GTE Am went to the #45 Team Project 1 Porsche of Matteo Cairoli, Mikkel Pedersen and Nicolas Leutwiler.
The only safety car of the race was caused by Henrique Chaves when his TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage was thrown up in the air after he ran wide over the kerbs on the entry to the second chicane.
Chaves’ car landed upside down after losing one of its doors and slid to the other side of the track, before coming to a rest after a full roll over. The Portuguese driver was uninjured and was able to escape the car unaided.
Results to follow
