Swiss-based Newblood By Morand Racing took a well-earned win at the penultimate round of the European Le Mans Series at the Paul Ricard track in southern France. The result gives the team enough points to go into the final round with a chance of challenging for the title. Victory will be decided between four teams – all on Dunlop tyres.

Pole position for the race was claimed by Murphy Prototypes, their first of the season, with Nathanael Berthon setting a time of 1:47.837 in the Oreca-Nissan, faster than last year’s pole time by two-tenths of a second.

Murphy led for the first ten laps before Jota Sport took over, the Zytek-Nissan leading to the first stops. From there Newblood By Morand had their first stint at the front, only rescinding the lead for 13 of the remaining 101 laps with the Morgan-Judd. The race was trouble-free with no safety car periods or major incidents impacting on the order. Signatech Alpine (Alpine-Nissan) finished second followed by Murphy Protoypes.

Standings leaders Signatech extended their championship lead with their runner-up finish. Jota Sport, who finished fourth, Race Performance, seventh after a great recovery from an early electrical problem, and Newblood are the three teams that will be challenging Signatech for the title in Portugal next month.

Tyre performance played its part in the outcome of the race, with each team having a Dunlop engineer to assist with tyre choice and pit-stop strategy. The teams used a combination of single and double stints, and both medium and hard compounds were used successfully in the race.

Mike McGregor, Dunlop Motorsport:
“The tyres worked well with fastest laps being set well into stints and both compounds being used with success. It’s a testament to the products that we had such a good race. The top teams were only separated by driver performance and strategy. Our engineers worked closely with each team to get the best tyre and set-up for each chassis and the results showed that the tyres were consistent and fast. We’re going to have a great deciding round in October.”