The European Le Mans Series qualifying went Dunlop’s way with the top-six teams having chosen the brand for their 2014 campaigns. Harry Tincknell drove the Jota Sport Zytek Z11SN-Nissan to pole position with a huge 1.152 second margin to the next car.

Jota Sport went on to lead the majority of the four-hour race until 50 minutes remained when an incident during Simon Dolan’s stint ended in a heavy impact and the squad’s retirement. After a safety car period the chase was on with an effective sprint race remaining to decide the winner with the top-six on the same lap.

Thiriet by TDS were the ultimate victors after Tristan Gommendy took advantage of back-markers to take the lead from Race Performance with Newblood by Morand Racing pushing hard for second and crossing the line less than one second behind. The fastest race lap was set by Murphy Prototypes but the team could only finish eighth after suffering a debris related puncture.

Tristan Gommendy, Thiriet by TDS Racing:
“I pushed hard – Mr Frey [Race Performance] had new tyres but I caught him in the corners and was more aggressive. Our tyres were on the second stint but they were quite consistent with not a lot of degradation so I could still push. We’re pretty happy about the tyres.”

Mike McGregor, Dunlop Motorsport:
“Today has shown the tyre performance well, with the pace indisputable. Six Dunlop cars qualified ahead of our rivals and in the race there were Dunlop cars in the top three throughout the race, with the top four across the line and the six fastest cars all using Dunlop.

“Tyre strategy was interesting with the new race length and regulations regarding maximum driver time depending on driver grading all adding to complex permutations. Our teams tended to use combinations of medium and hard compounds which worked well and we double stinted the hard tyres and both double and triple stinted the medium compound without issue which bodes well for a competitive season given the pace our teams achieved here today.”