Intro:

Mathias Beche and Pierre Thiriet claimed victory in the opening round of the European Le Mans Series at Paul Ricard on Sunday for the French TDS Racing squad.

Beche and Thiriet ended up winning the six-hour race in their ORECA-Nissan 03 by more than a lap after the challenge from the Greaves Zytek wilted in the fifth hour.

Script:

The opening round of the European Le Mans Series took place at Paul Ricard on Sunday.

Mathias Beche and Pierre Thiriet ended up winning the six-hour race for the French TDS Racing squad by more than a lap after the challenge from the Greaves Zytek wilted in the fifth hour.

The race for overall victory had initially been a three-way fight between the TDS ORECA, the Greaves Zytek and the Status GP team's brand-new Lola-Judd/BMW driven by Yelmer Buurman, Alexander Sims and Dean Stirling.

The Status car fell out of contention when SPEED EuroSeries graduate Stirling, racing a modern LMP2, was unable to match the times of his team-mates after taking over from Buurman in the third hour.

Greaves driver Alex Brundle dislodged part of the front bodywork after taking over the Zytek-Nissan Z11SN and a pit-lane infraction at the resulting stop resulted in a two-minute stop-go penalty. That left the car, which was started by Tom Kimber-Smith, in fourth place at the chequered flag.

The Sebastien Loeb Racing ORECA-Nissan 03 driven by Nicolas Minassain, Nicolas Marroc and Stephane Sarrazin came through to finish a lap down on the winners. The car, which was only finished in the week of the race, was never in contention for the victory.

Sims brought the Status Lola back to third after the Greaves car's problems, finishing 30 seconds down on Sarrazin at the finish.

The JMW Motorsport Ferrari squad sealed a dramatic victory in the GTE Pro class.

James Walker and Jonny Cocker completed the race on four stops in their 458 Italia, whereas the JMB Ferrari that had led most of the way in the hands of Jamie Melo and Marco Frezza needed a late-race splash-and-dash.

Cocker sneaked ahead as Melo exited the pits with 11 minutes to go and was able to hold on to claim a one-second victory.