16 April 2018
Maranello, 16 April 2018 - Reigning champion team JMW Motorsport scored a remarkable win in the 2018 4 Hours of Le Castellet, first round of the 2018 European Le Mans Series (ELMS) championship after a superb performance by Miguel Molina, Liam Griffin and Alex MacDowall. The British team’s 488 GTE took the spoils on the last lap of the race in dramatic fashion thanks to a monster stint by Molina to score the team its first win since Le Mans last year.
Key moments. The #88 Proton Competition Porsche led most of the four hours but the team’s comfortable lead dissolved in the final hour, Molina in the JMW Motorsport Ferrari chasing down Matteo Carioli. It ended in an almighty tussle in the final few minutes, Molina getting the better of Cairoli on the final lap of the race; the 2017 championship-winning JMW team’s only lap spent in the class lead! The move was made at Turn 4 after the Spaniard sold a dummy and threw his 488 GTE up the inside of the Porsche to take the lead. The pair banged doors, and Cairoli pushed extremely hard for the rest of the lap, but through traffic, he couldn’t make another move. In what was an incredible drive, Liam Griffin, Alex MacDowall and Molina therefore snatched the win, and an early championship lead.
Joy. “We were written off early, but that last stint from Miguel was something else,” Griffin said. “He was 14 seconds ahead in the final hour, so to catch up and make the pass on the last lap was fantastic”. Third went to the Ebimotors Porsche, fourth in the attrition-hit class was eventually the Krohn Racing Ferrari, a positive outcome in Tracy Krohn and Nic Jonsson’s ELMS return.