Remaining conservative about pit strategy did the trick for M-Sport Bentley during the Paul Ricard 1000, third round of the 2019 Blancpain GT Endurance Cup, with the No. 107 Bentley Continental GT3, driven by Jordan Lee Pepper, Steven Kane and Jules Gounon, taking a dominant victory in the French night.
Even though there are some huge amounts of runoff at Paul Ricard where you can escape in case of a mess, this doesn’t impede crashes, and at Signes a heavy crash involving the No. 2 WRT Audi and the No. 444 HB Racing Ferrari brought the first yellow flag with five minutes of racing while the No. 4 Black Falcon Mercedes and the No. 107 M-Sport Bentley were fighting for the lead.
When the race got back 30 minutes after, the No. 107 took the lead on pure power, and this was the only move seen before another yellow comes out due to a crash from the No. 55 Attempto Audi and the No. 78 Barwell Lamborghini at the last corner, which saw the Audi come to a halt and the Lamborghini retired.
The yellow flag made those teams with more than a car go with different strategies, though some ones like ROWE Racing decided to stay a bit more, which proved to a burden in the No. 99 Porsche as it rushed to the pits with a puncture. With the pit stop roulette happening the No. 107 M-Sport Bentley eventually retook the lead. The sun was going down seeing the No. 107 Bentley not being taken down of its top spot, with the No. 72 SMP Ferrari surprisingly ignoring the cycle and coming in second.
With two thirds of the race complete, an old curse came again for Bentley, as a stuck left front wheel hindered the pit stop progress of the No. 107, meaning that the No. 72 SMP Ferrari jumped into first place. But then the curse turned into the Russians as a pit procedure infringement brought a drive through penalty to the No. 72 Ferrari, handing the top spot again to the No. 107 Bentley.
The final hour had only four real contenders for victory - the No. 107 M-Sport Bentley, the No. 72 SMP Ferrari, the No. 76 R-Motorsport Aston Martin and the No. 563 FFF Lamborghini. The final 30 minutes of racing were spent with the No. 107 managing the gap of more than 30 seconds to the No. 72 and then go for the checkered. After the No. 72, the No. 563 FFF Lamborghini still managed to win third place after a patient strategy that took about 20 minutes driving behind the No. 76 from R-Motorsport.
The No. 90 AKKA-ASP Mercedes enjoyed a fairly calm run to the Silver Cup win, with the sister No. 87 Mercedes cruising to the Pro-Am Cup victory. Right behind the Pro-Am winners came the Am Cup winning car, the No. 188 Garage59 Aston Martin, which enjoyed total domination during the race.
Now all the attentions will go to a possibly packed TOTAL 24 Hours of Spa, with collective tests coming first to then go the main point of the Blancpain GT Series and Intercontinental GT Challenge, set for July 27th.
PHOTO - SRO
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