IMSA 2022 Motul Petit Le Mans DPi Race
📷 © Luc Warnotte @ Motul Petit Le Mans 2022.
Clear blue sky for the last DPi at 12:10.
The DPi class race was full of twists and turns starting with a pit stop by Ricky Taylor with the #10 Acura. He found himself at the back of the field having to overtake the GTD, LMP2 and LMP3 to the point where Earl Bamber (Cadillac #02), then in the lead, caught up with him to take a lap.
But Taylor resisted until the first safety car at the end of the first half hour, which allowed him to catch up with the DPi when the race was restarted.
The race went on like that during 9,5 hours with continuous leader changes depending on pit stops and several Full Course yellow and Safety Cars.
The last full course yellow happened 1/2 hour before the end with the two Cadillac Racing out of contention (read further). The four remaining DPi were regrouped with Blomqvist retaining the lead from Albuquerque, pursued by Derani. Only 1.4sec covered this trio.
With 14mins to go, Albuquerque was putting Blomqvist under intense pressure but Albuquerque making contact with the Winward Racing Mercedes. The #10 Wayne Taylor Racing trickled slowly to the pits with a dozen minutes to go, leaving O. Jarvis, T. Blomqvist and H. Castronoves with #60 Meyer Shank Racing W/Curb-Agajan Acura winning the race.
Derani, Conway and Pla with Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac #48 end second five-second from the lead.
K. Kobayashi, M. Rockenfeller and J. Johnson came home third with the #48 Ally Cadillac, one lap down.
With a bit more than half an hour left in the 10-hour race, the two CGR-run Cadillac DPi-V.Rs made contact at turn 1, sending both cars off-course and into the barriers.
Van der Zande, Bourdais and Dixon made it back on track following the incident so that the #01 Cadillac was finally classified fourth, four laps down.
E. Bamber, A. Lynn and R. Hunter-Reay with Cadillac Racing #02 car was eighth overall and fifth of the DPis, five laps back despite leading a lot of laps and hours
Filipe Albuqueqrque, Ricky Taylor and B. Hartley with #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 despite leading laps of the covered were classified tenth overall and sixth of class.
T. Vautier, R. Westbrook and L. Duval with JDC Miller Motorsport did score the 5 points allocated to the leader after 4 hours racing in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup DPi but had to abandon 19 minutes later
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