In the second round of the European le Mans Series, Michele Beretta and Proton Team had a fantastic race, but unfortunately the victory vanished due to a tyre’s puncture.
The 4 Hours’ weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, second round of the ELMS, saw Michele Beretta and his team-mates, Alessio Picariello e Christian Ried, always among the pacesetters from the testing day, thanks to the team Proton Competition’s great job, that allowed them to bring the Porsche 911 RSR to the maximum performance.
After the qualifying, ended in fifth place, the #77 Porsche drivers made an almost perfect race, recovering lap after lap and taking the lead halfway.
Unfortunately, a tyre’s puncture vanished the fantastic job, exactly when Michele was driving.
The problem at the tyre (rear left), triggered an impressive series of spins at Eau Rouge and Radillon. Beretta was able to avoid any crash into the safety barriers and brought back the car to the pitlane, driving at very low speed in order to don’t damage the suspensions.
This episode costs to the Proton Competition’s trio the second win in a row, with the only sixth place under the chequered flag.
After the race, Beretta didn’t hide his annoyance: “We were very competitive in these conditions, with lower temperatures compared to the days before and with much more grip on the tarmac. We had a perfect set-up for the race, this allowed us to lead the way with about 20 seconds of gap when I had the puncture, luckily without any crash. This messed up our strategy in add to the time lost to come back in the pitlane… at the end, we lost the second win for this puncture.”
Next round is scheduled for 29-30th August again at Paul Ricard instead of Barcelona, with a late minute change due to the raising of Covid-19 cases in Spain.
