The FIA International Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the stewards which means Signatech Alpine are officially crowned the 2018 Le Mans 24 Hours winners in LMP2 class.
The #26 G-Drive Racing outfit of Jean-Eric Vergne, Roman Rusinov and Andrea Pizzitola finished as LMP2 winners and fifth overall following the grueling 24 hours race. But they were disqualified from the event on Monday over faulty fuel restrictor.
The #28 TDS Racing of Loic Duval, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Francois Perrodo was also disqualified as they lost their third place finish in LMP2 class. This propelled #36 Signatech Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre, Pierre Thiriet and Andrea Negrao to the winning position.
With Signatech Alpine winning, the crew of #39 Graff-SO24 Oreca of Vincent Capillaire, Jonathan Hirschi and Tristan Gommendy moved to second with the #32 United Autosports Ligier of Juan Pablo Montoya, Hugo de Sadeleer and Will Owen in third.
However, both G-Drive and TDS Racing decided to appeal the decision with the hearing set for September 18 in Paris. Nearly two weeks after the hearing, the FIA International Court of Appel revealed their results.
It upheld the decision of the stewards on the grounds that the fuel restrictor put in by both the teams did give them unfair advantage of more than six seconds in the pit stops which helped G-Drive to a dominant win.
The team argued that it was a technical innovation on their part which wasn’t mentioned in the regulations but the court stuck to its decision of disqualifying both the G-Drive and TDS Racing LMP2 cars.
The changed results sees the #36 Signatech Alpine as winners of LMP2 class followed by the #39 Graff-SO24 and #32 United Autosports on the podium with #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing in fourth leading #31 DragonSpeed, #29 Racing Team Nederland, #33 Jackie Chan DC Racing, #23 Panis Barthez Competition, #35 SMP Racing, #47 Cetilar Villorba Corse and #50 Larbre Competition in the LMP2 class.
