Polish sports-car outfit Inter-Europol-Competition succeeded with its best European Le Mans Series result so far at the final heat of the series at Estoril. The Duo of Jakub Smiechowski and Jens Petersen brought their Ligier home on a fine 5th in class and 13th place overall for the #13 Ligier JS P3-Nissan. Again after a modest qualifying a solid performance brought the german-polish duo within reach of the podium places  improving their so far best result of the previous heat in Spa – which ended on sixth in class – by a further place.

Starting driver Jakub Smiechowski improved within his first stint from a traffic-related 15th qualifying position in class to eighth, which became 4th in class during his second stint, batteling the cars of Graff and United Autosports. Already included was a brief spin during stint 2 while chasing further positions. “One LMP3 touched me while I was lapping him. So I had to start chasing the opponents again. We had quite some contacts during the race. The track was also very greasy which meant you had to pay attention at each corner.”

Jens Petersen took over the car in the middle of the race on 5th position. After he fell foul in a battlegroup of LMP3-cars after the only safety-car-period of the race, he fought back from 8th to 4th in class, but could not hold the Graff Racing car #10 in the final laps of the race. “After the chaotic restart I was pushed nearly of the track by an italian LMP3. Fortunately I could stay on the track, but later someone ripped of our backlight during a contact which had to be repaired during the final stop. The guys did well in keeping the car competetive and repaired it quick. But without these contacts a 4th in class would have been possible. Also tha SC – as in Spa – was not in our favor. Regarding this this was a quite well deserved result”  

The result ended in Inter Europol taking the 10th position in the overall standing of the 2016 LMP3-classement of the European Le Mans Series with 24,5 gained points in the team´s maiden season.