Paul Ricard VdeV (Francja) cz. 1
23 maja 2016
Martin Hippe and Jakub Śmiechowski took the victory in the third round of VdeV Endurance Series in Paul Ricard! They already showed their speed in the qualifying which they finished in third place, first of LMP3. Like in the previous races Kuba was driving the first two hours on Sunday. He lost one position on the start but regained it quickly, keeping a good pace afterwards. When one hour had passed, he pitted to refuel. Unfortunately for some reason the cap from the fuel tank got loose, causing a fuel leakage. After half hour he had to make an unexpected stop at the gas station. We started to have doubts if we would get to the finish line with our three-stop strategy. With two hours left on the clock we changed the drivers. Not long after that Martin started to report problems with the brakes. Despite that he was still able to clock very good lap times increasing the lead. Thanks to that we had over one lap advantage to the second team little before the end of the race. Having that in mind, we decided to make a safety pit stop to pour a few liters of gasoline into the car six minutes before the chequred flag. It was without a doubt one of the hardest weekends this year, but we got rewarded by grabbing the victory in the overall classification! Congratulations for our drivers and the whole Inter Europol Competition crew! Now we go into an earned summer break but our thoughts are already at the next race in Spain.