Harold Primat and Christophe Tinseau suffered a blow to their hopes of being classified as the best petrol-powered car in the Le Mans Series after only managing eighth place at the Nurburgring.

Even so, it was an excellent drive by the Swiss-French pairing after their Pescarolo Judd suffered a transmission failure shortly after their first scheduled pit stop left them with an immense amount of ground to make up.

Rising to 20th place in the closing stages – and ninth in LMP1 -, Pescarolo's hopes of scoring at least a point looked to be dashed, only for the similar Rollcentre machine to experience a lengthy pit stop.

Catching them hand over fist as the ailing car returned to the circuit, Primat grabbed one point for eighth place on the very last lap to keep them in the hunt of the unofficial petrol-powered contest.

“The car's been very good all weekend apart from that one problem,” Primat said. “It's very unfortunate as we had the potential to get P6 overall and P2 of the petrol cars which would have been great. We both drove really hard to fight back through the field and got an unexpected bonus to get the point at the end.

“It's not the result we were hoping for at the beginning of the weekend but it shows that in motor racing you should never give up and that is the attitude I always take. We saw how hard the team worked to make the repairs and we wanted to push just as hard in the race to say thank you.

Classified 12th overall in the standings, Primat and Tinseau are just a single point behind their closest petrol-powered rivals Stefan Mucke and Jan Charouz in the Charouz Lola Aston Martin. With only one round to go, Primat is eager to beat them to the 'title'.

“In the championship, the fight to be the best petrol car is still on. We need a strong, trouble-free race in the last round at Silverstone and then we have got a chance.”