Eight Dunlop teams competed in the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) race at the French Paul Ricard circuit this weekend. Murphy Prototypes won the race, the first win of the five-race season for the Irish squad. Morand Racing followed with Jota Sport completing the all-Dunlop podium with three different chassis – Oreca, Morgan and Zytek. During the 2013 season Dunlop runners have claimed all five pole positions, all five fastest laps and four out of five race victories.

It was Jota Sport’s Oliver Turvey that took pole position for the three hour Le Castellet round, the third top grid spot for the team this year, and Jota led from the race start with Turvey building a good lead. When gentleman driver Simon Dolan took over he suffered from a throttle issue and was also outpaced by Brendan Hartley in the Murphy Prototype car, Hartley setting the best lap of the race, a blistering 1:51.134. Morand Racing also drove well being consistent and with a strong enough pace to be in podium contention throughout the race.

The title-chasing Thiriet by TDS Racing team hit trouble in the opening laps with a wheel issue that cost seven laps and the championship. Jota, the other team with a mathematical chance, missed out on being crowned champions by six points.

Dunlop-shod JMW Motorsport, the only Dunlop runner in the LMGTE category took another podium finish, crossing the line in second place. Although the 2013 championship has only just finished Dunlop is already gearing up for 2014 and going directly from Paul Ricard to a test of future specifications.

Sebastien Montet, Manager – Race Design & Development: “It is always great to see a full Dunlop podium but it is a shame that we won the battle and not the war. It was a good race and, apart from one precautionary change of the front left for Morand Racing, the teams double stinted with both medium and hard compounds throughout the race which is very good for this aggressive track. The whole season has been a great demonstration of endurance racing at its best. To win you need to stay out of trouble and our teams did plenty of winning with really good pace. We are very proud of our teams who helped us to get the great statistics of domination in qualifying, race pace and race victories. We can now look forward to 2014 and giving our teams the tyres to make them even more competitive.”