TMG wins Endurance Brasil round at Interlagos

In a weekend where solidarity was the main game for Império Endurance Brasil, TMG won a race with lots of highs and lows for the field at Interlagos, as the No. 35 JLM Racing AJR of David Muffato and Pedro Queirolo appeared in the final part of the race to have the spoils of victory.
 
While the race had some newcoming entities, like the Porsche 992 GT3R that puts Stuttgart Motorsport on par with the rest of the Porsche customer teams around the World, one thing that couldn’t go unnoticed was that the series received donations to send to the Rio Grande do Sul state, which was put into total chaos by a series of destructive floodings that caused major damage and left a lot of its population homeless or in need of seek refuge in other places.
 
Rio Grande do Sul is an important state for the championship as the national competition was born from the state based Endurance RS, which was revived recently as the Campeonato Gaúcho de Endurance, and a number of teams come from there to compete in cars created there, like the JLM Racing AJR and the Sigma P1 G5. While some teams could move over to São Paulo on their own or with massive help of the whole grid, the teams that stood there either couldn’t leave to compete, like FTR Motorsport, or saw their work being engulfed by the flood.
 
By coincidence, these two prototypes conceived in the Rio Grande do Sul state, the JLM Racing AJR and the Sigma P1 G5, were leading the way at the start, and the No. 444 JLM AJR was incredibly under pressure from the No. 12 Kraucher Sigma, though it took 5 minutes for Sergio Jimenez to show he had no reservations on passing Sarim Carlesso, in time before the first Safety Car entry, caused by the crash of the No. 31 AutLog Ligier.
 
One car that was showing promise in this first hour was the No. 30 Power Imports AJR, coming from the middle of the table to become third, becoming second before the first 30 minutes, only to stop on track just before the end of the first hour.
 
With the No. 444 demoted due to a drive through penalty due to invalid restart position, the No. 12 had the No. 22 AutLog Ligier on its tail, The No. 35 TMG AJR got the lead in a slightly different pit strategy, and the Safety Car intervention caused by a stopped No. 11 FTR Sigma minimized the losses for Pedro Queirolo and David Muffato, while giving the lead back to the No. 444 right at the end of the second hour.
 
With another Safety Car visit, the No. 35 got back to the lead as part of the pit strategy cycle while the No. 117 BTZ Ligier was finally appearing in second while spending the first three hours on a low comsumption strategy to extend mileage. The problem for the No. 117 was that the push was too late, with 21 seconds separating the winning No. 35 TMG AJR from the Ligier JS P320.
 
The No. 27 Team RC Mercedes had a really dominant run in the GT3 class, with the No. 83 entry completing the team’s 1-2 finish ahead of the No. 55 Stuttgart Porsche. The No. 21 Stuttgart Porsche had no problems to win in the GT4 class as the rest of the class field was basically on survival mode.
 
The championship goes to an one month break before resuming the action at Velo Citta on 15 June.
 
PHOTO: Isabela Katopodis