Algarve Pro Racing And Its Path To A First ELMS Title

Even with a 20-point lead in the championship points standings, last Sunday’s European Le Mans Series season finale was never going to be a straightforward or stress-free experience for the folks at Algarve Pro Racing.

However, the Portuguese-flagged team’s contending ORECA, run impeccably this season by the team assembled by husband and wife duo Stewart and Sam Cox, ably assisted by technical director David Leach, sealed the LMP2 and overall championships. This adds to a long list of accolades in recent years which includes multiple Asian Le Mans Series titles, a Le Mans LMP2 Pro/Am class win and an IMSA Endurance Cup title.

Last weekend’s triumph on home ground, was hugely significant and perhaps the team’s most impressive achievement so far.

Its title wins in the ELMS this season came after a season-long battle against elite LMP2 opposition, with world-class teams and driving talent up and down the entry list. LMP2 and LMP2 Pro/Am was littered with factory drivers, ex-Formula 1 drivers, Le Mans winners, IndyCar starters and hordes of young drivers with a bright future.

And it’s easy to forget that prior to the start of the campaign, Algarve Pro Racing hadn’t won an ELMS race overall. But that quickly changed during the second round of the season at Paul Ricard when its trio of drivers, Kyffin Simpson, Alex Lynn and James Allen scored an emphatic win in a race that went down to the wire.

Sunday’s race had a bit of everything, with heavy rain showers delaying the start, a red flag, multiple safety cars and class battles that raged until the very end. It was remarkable then, that on a day which featured treacherous conditions trackside and the pressures that come from a title race going down to the wire, the team produced its most calm and collected performance.

Staying focused before the race got underway was key. With the rain coming down throughout the morning, shortening the Le Mans Cup finale and delaying the ELMS race start, ensuring that everyone in the garage was ready for the task at hand was not easy. This is where the experience of someone like Alex Lynn, who has a Le Mans class win, two Sebring 12 Hours wins and a lengthy stint as a factory driver under his belt, comes in.

I was insistent on everyone being mentally ready to race hard

For a long time, the chances of the final race of the season going ahead appeared slim, with standing water everywhere and an attempt to get the race going thwarted by relentless showers in the early afternoon. But Alex Lynn and those around him at Algarve Pro, like the team in race control, were convinced the conditions would change.

“I was insistent on everyone being mentally ready to race hard. The weather was what it was, but in the championship finale, we knew we would be expected to put on a show. We knew we would race, and we would need to race hard,” Lynn told DSC. “We had to stay strong and everyone did.

“We knew the organisers were going to push to get a race and race as soon as possible.”

Thankfully they did and after a delay of over two and a half hours, the race went green at 15:30, with Kyffin Simpson tasked with feeling out the conditions. Putting 19-year-old IndyCar-bound Ganassi development driver Simpson in for the start of the race could have been a strategy call that backfired due to his relative lack of LMP experience. But as he had all season long, Simpson steadied the ship early in the race and laid the foundations for a strong result.

Behind the wheel, it was far from easy, but with titles on the line he remained focused and delivered the goods.

There was standing water everywhere

“It was crazy, it was so tricky when we went out the first time because there was standing water everywhere,” Simpson told DSC after the race. “But it dried up so quickly, way quicker than I thought which meant we were good to start. I started fourth and stayed there, I didn’t have a ton of pace in the wet, and didn’t feel great but we were trying to keep it out of the wall.

“The spray when we went green wasn’t as bad as I expected, but traffic was difficult because the closing speeds were so different compared to the dry. It’s been very crucial to be in the car for a stint like this, it’s great for my development and race craft.”

That left 2023 Rolex 24 LMP2 winner James Allen, who (ironically) pipped APR at the line to claim that win,  to take the wheel with the conditions at their most perilous, with the track drying and the number of incidents up and down the order piling up.

“I knew I needed to play it safe in my stint, not take risks because it was so tricky on track,” Allen explained. “I had to use a few laps to discover the conditions. It was a lot wetter during the race than it was during the weekend.

“It was consistency like that which won us the championship. Aside from Barcelona where we were turned around and ended up in the gravel, it’s been a superb run.”

With James’ stint complete and the end of the season in sight, Lynn then brought the car home, the car climbing the order from fourth to second in the closing laps.

Lynn’s stint proved to be the most eventful, with a hard-charging Job van Uitert in pursuit and eager to catch the leading United ORECA to give Panis Racing a shot at the title. Ultimately Panis and United needed Algarve Pro’s car to retire for it to be ‘game on’, but that didn’t stop anyone from pushing.

Lynn and Uitert battled for multiple laps, with Lynn eventually seeing the Dutchman off and sealing a second-place finish in the finale. On this occasion, Lynn could have let van Uitert by, but he didn’t and fought on. “It’s the way we’re built,” he said after the race.

“We knew everyone would push to race, and it was tough at the end with lots of mistakes. Second place in the championship was up for grabs too so everyone was giving it everything in LMP2.”

That decision to fight until the end led to the only heartstopping moment for the team in the race, when the two cars came together at the Turn 5 hairpin after van Uitert’s dive up the inside. Mercifully both cars emerged unscathed and continued. It was a move that Lynn told DSC he had no issues with after the race, even though it ended in contact.

“There was a small part of me that wanted to let Job go,” Lynn continued. “But I wanted second place, I wanted to show United that even though they won both races, it didn’t mean much in terms of the championship.

“Job had a lot of pace, so full respect to him, I would have gone for it up the inside like he did.”

What does this mean to everyone involved? It’s hard to quantify. All three drivers have big ambitions for the coming years and the team now finds itself as the benchmark for LMP2 success in Europe.

“I am so proud to have done this at APR. The level of engineering has been so high. I am glad to have been even a small part of delivering them their first ELMS title,” added Lynn.

In the years to come, we will look back on the 2023 ELMS season as one for the ages, a flashpoint for the rude health of sportscar racing globally in 2023.

What’s more, next year the ELMS is set to see further growth at the top, with an even larger pack of LMP2 cars expected to line up on the grid in Barcelona next April…

Images courtesy of Clement Marin, Goodyear, Alex Lynn