LeMans 24 LMP2 winners disqualified over re-fueling violation

No. 26 Oreca 07 Gibson stripped of win. This isn't NASCAR where the winner always keeps their victory no matter how bad they cheat.

The LMP2 winning G-Drive Racing team was stripped of its 24 Hours of Le Mans class victory on Monday night.

The No. 26 Oreca 07 Gibson, and its sister No. 28 TDS Racing entry, were removed from the final results when it was uncovered that it had a non-compliant part in the fuel restrictor that created a significantly quicker fuel flow.

As a result, both the first and fourth-place LMP2 cars will not be classified in the latest results update. This provisionally gives the class win to the No. 36 Signatech Alpine A460 Gibson driven by Nicolas Lapierre, Pierre Thiriet and Andre Negrao, barring the results of any potential appeal by G-Drive and TDS.

The No. 39 Graff-SO24 shared by Vincent Capillaire, Jonathan Hirschi and Tristan Gommendy are provisionally second.

The FIA report reads:

"The technical delegates issued a report to the Stewards that “an additional machined part not featuring in the drawing is inserted into the flow restrictor, changing the wetted restrictor surface described by the regulatory drawing.

"The Technical Delegates provided the Stewards with photos of the restrictor, the referenced part and its assembly to the “dead man valve".

"The contested part is a machined part that extends from the dead man valve and inserts inside the cone of the Flow Restrictor.

"The Technical Delegates stated to the Stewards that they started their investigation of the competitor’s refuelling system following the race when they noted the competitor was able to refuel significantly faster than any of their competitors."

In its statement, G-Drive and TDS stated that there is nothing in the regulations that prohibits the addition of other parts in the refueling mechanism, something that FIA contests.

Reports here and here state that WEC’s official timing partner Alkamel Systems were six to eight seconds faster than the competition during the twice around the clock affair. Unlike the LMP1, GTE-Pro and GTE-Am classes, the LMP2 category does not have a minimum refueling time.