The polish sports-car team Inter-Europol Competition finished the 5th race of the European Le Mans Series, the 4 hours of Spa-Francorchamps last week with a 6th rank in the highly competitive LMP3-class. Drivers Jakub Smiechowski (PL) and Jens Petersen (D) brought home their Ligier JS P3 LMP3 in 15 th place overall on the same lap than the race winning Ligier of the frensh Graff Racing Equipe. The eventful race was finished under yellow due to a late racing incident. Despite archiving the best result of the season so far, the race could have also ended on the podium for the team.
Qualifying was tactically reduced to prepare the car for the race, as technical director Michael Keese (D) explained. “We decided to save our limited fresh tires for the race. So a suitable set-up, which was smooth to the tires, was more important than a showcase-laptime. The qualifying-result was therefore modest with a 16th place (2:16.932), but we knew we would do similar times also in the race. With Kuba and Jens we have 2 capable drivers with matching performance on board and we were confident that they would do very well in catching up positions.”
Starting driver Jakub Smiechowski took advantage of the strategy and quickly improved his position. “On fresh tires I was able to attack and gained several positions. The car handled well and I was very confident in the set-up. Unfortunately the first safety car after the Murphy Prototypes-accident hurt us a lot. After my stop under yellow we joined the track 2s after the SC and stuck behind it.” Michael Keese explained: “That damn safety-car costed us a realistic shot on the podium today. We were on the 3rd position and just 2s too late to be able to catch up the queue so on that laps we lost a lot of time.”
Despite this setback 2nd stint driver Jens Petersen carried on with the recovery drive, which could be claimed as successful, as he improved up to 2nd position in class until his final fuel stop. But his finish was not without further drama ahead: “I had a clash again with our “favourite” Ferrari, while trying to lap him. We both ended up in a 180 degree spin. After this my front tires were very much done, as I also stressed them during my stint in the lapping manoeuvres of the fast GTE-cars a little bit too much. They are faster on straight-line-speed so you have to be on the edge to get in a position to catch them in the breaking zones with our lighter car. So due to the worn tires and a damaged front splitter from the crash I could not respond to attacks from our opponents and lost 2 further positions in the end after the spin. Without this a 4th in class would have been on our cards.”
The team Inter-Europol Competition is the first polish LMP3-Team. The squad was formed in 2011 and is led by Co-team-founders from german and polish site. After years competing in Formula sport like Formula Renault and Boss-GP the team acquired a Ligier JS P3 LMP3 in 2016 and is the first polish equipe to compete in the European Le Mans Series. They also compete in the VdeV-Endurance GT and Proto series where it currently leads the point-standings. For next year an expansion of the already successful LMP3-engagement is under evaluation.