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The Portuguese rider considers “a dream come true” to have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans this Sunday in the LMP2 class, “for Portugal”.
The triumph earned the Coimbra driver, who teams up with British Phil Hanson and Paul di Resta at Oreca, the mathematical achievement of the Endurance World Cup. For the title to be effective, it is enough for Albuquerque to start the game of the last race, in Bahrain.
“On time, we have already made it, but as a general rule we have to line up for the last race in Bahrain. So for now, we can celebrate the victory at Le Mans, the rest will be on time. The team did an extraordinary job, the drivers always did our best and I have no doubt that we are fair winners, “said Albuquerque, who experienced the last lap of driving from the pits.
The Portuguese driver called it an “incredible race”.
“It was a very sweaty race, but we took the cup home with us. It was really until the last lap,” Albuquerque commented, after watching teammate Phil Hanson cut the finish line first, beating the other Portuguese’s team in the race, António Felix da Costa. (Jot).
The final laps were impressive, with the Albuquerque Oreca team having to go to the pits to refuel with seven minutes to go.
However, Phil Hanson, who almost got lost in and out of the pits, managed to get ahead of Briton Anthony Davidson, one of Félix da Costa’s teammates, along with Mexican Robert González.
Davidson would finally stop a lap later, also to refuel, leaving Filipe Albuquerque with a sigh of relief.
“I did not expect them to stop. It was crazy. It was a tough race, everyone within the limit. We managed to win and we have to congratulate the team. It is a dream come true. Winning Le Mans for Portugal was great,” he concluded. Conimbricense.
This is the second Portuguese victory in Europe’s most iconic endurance event after Pedro Lamy won the GT AM category in 2012.
For Félix da Costa, it was an “excellent result”.
“We started from the seventh, we walked forward, we walked backward, we squeezed the oranges as much as possible. I did not win, Filipe Albuquerque won, the cup is very well delivered,” the Cascais driver congratulated.
This Saturday, victory in the 88th edition of the French GP smiled, for the third year in a row, on the official Toyota of the Swiss Sébastien Buémi, the New Zealander Brendon Hartley (who replaced the Spanish Fernando Alonso) and the Japanese Kazuki Nakajima.
The Japanese team made 387 laps of the French circuit, five more than the runner-up, the American Gustavo Menezes, the Brazilian Bruno Senna and the Frenchman Norman Nato, in a Rebellion.
The other Toyota, the Argentine José María López, the British Mike Conway and the Japanese Kamui Kobayashi, closed the podium after suffering mechanical problems, already six laps behind the winners.
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