Cars & Autos | Tuesday 18 August, 2015 3:36 am |

Sir Chris Hoy and his Ginetta-Nissan team mate Charlie Robertson stormed into the lead of the European Le Mans Series LM P3 category yesterday by winning the ‘4 Hours of the Red Bull Ring’ in Austria.  Following them home in the LM P3 class were fellow Ginetta-Nissan drivers and GT Academy winners Mark Shulzhitskiy and Gaetan Paletou who took third place.

 

Robertson took the start in the #3 car after taking pole position earlier on Sunday morning.  After a great run by Charlie, which saw him get into battles where cars were going three or four abreast into corners, he handed the car over in the lead to Hoy.   

 

Hoy’s job was to maintain the lead and he did just that throughout a faultless double stint before handing back over to Robertson for the run to the flag.

 

“The whole team were faultless today,” said Chris. “The car never missed a beat, the stops were perfect, we can feel the progress that is being made with the LM P3 and it really sets up the Championship fight for Paul Ricard.”

 

JOTA Sport dominated the LM P2 class and despite being given a run for their money by another Nissan-powered team, TDS Racing, Harry Tincknell took the chequered flag as overall race winner. This is the first European Le Mans Series victory of 2015 for the 2014 LM P2 Le Mans winners and the result takes them straight to the top of the leaderboard.

 

Tincknell, who also took outright pole position in the JOTA Sport Gibson-Nissan said after the race: “I’m really, really happy with our performance in Austria. Achieving pole-position at the Red Bull Ring for a second consecutive year was great. Filipe (Albuquerque) drove a perfect opening stint at the start but kept having his lead eroded by the Safety Cars. In my opinion, Simon (Dolan) drove his best ever race which meant that I was right in the hunt when I took over to the chequered flag. Safety Cars disrupted my own stints but I just got my head down each time and pulled away and thankfully it was enough! A stunning effort by all of the team as always. Pole, win, fastest lap and championship lead – job done!”

 

Nissan powered the top four finishers in the LM P2 class: JOTA Sport, Thiriet by TDS Racing, SMP Racing and Greaves Motorsport.  All of the European Le Mans Series teams will be back in action at Paul Ricard, France on 5-6 September.