What a race weekend in Le Mans. For Formex Ambassadors and Teams, there’s something of everything: a fantastic win, a horrible crash and a very promising outlook for the next races of the season.
Road to Le Mans Race: Alex Toril
With only 20 years old, Formex Ambassador Alex Toril is the first ever Spanish driver to win the famous support race of the 24H “Road to Le Mans” with his Norma M30 LMP3, together with his team DKR Engineering and teammate Jean Glorieux. Jean and Alex did a fantastic job during the entire weekend. In the qualifying sessions both drivers achieved the pole position for the races. The highlight was the performance of the young Toril who acheived a new lap record at Le Mans by stopping the watch at 3.50.258, fastest time ever for an LMP3 around the famous track! Race 1 took place on Thursday evening, Alex was in charge of doing the start and did a brilliant job, he kept the lead and managed to build a gap from up to 12 seconds to the second position in the first four laps. Unfortunately one corner before going into the pit-lane to make the driver change, while he was respecting a yellow slow zone (max. speed 80 km/H) the car in second place didn’t respect the Slow Zone and ended up hitting Alex’s car forcing him and the team to retire form the race with a suspension problem. On Saturday, the main race of the weekend took place. One more time the Norma M30 #3 started in pole position, this time was Alex’s teammate Jean Glorieux the one in charge of making the start. He did a brilliant job and kept the car in first place in the first laps of the race till lap 4 where he dropped down to P4. Jean finished his stint and handed the car over to Alex in second position. The Winway driver took over and again did some of his magic by making a fast out lap and overtook the car in first position straight away. Alex kept driving with the hammer down and with a high rhythm that allowed him to increase his gap with the second position car up to 16 seconds. Finally, after 13 laps and 57 minutes of racing, Alex Toril crossed the checkered flag and passed to the history of Le Mans by winning his first race.
24H of Le Mans: Team Manor Racing
Team Manor Racing achieved very promising qualifying results with their cars #25 (Trummer, Petrov, Gonzalez) in P2 and #24 (Hirschi, Tor, Vergne) in P6. Good first few hours and after some fuel issues, #25 could again catch up to the leading LMP2 competitors. Unfortunately, during the night and just before driver change, #25 with Trummer collided with an LMP1 by Toyota just next to the Dunlop driveway. #25 crashed after the contact and hit the barrier hard, making it impossible to continue the race. Trummer says that “I was driving all the way to the left into the right curve, then stayed left because there were some cars coming out of the pit lane. Suddenly I saw something white in the corner of my eye. It was the Toyota who hit me on the side. I had no chance and really crashed severely”. Luckily Trummer got away with just some bruises and an injury at the feet. We wish him quick recovery and Team Manor best success for the next race in Nürburgring on July 16th.
