RML (pictured) took overall victory in Sunday's European Le Mans Series 1000km race in Portugal after a day of drama.
The Pescarolo Sport Courage C60 was the first car past the chequered flag but was excluded from the results for causing an accident that eliminated the Johansson Racing Audi R8 as it led the race.
This is the first time a GTS car has taken an overall victory in ALMS / ELMS and it is also RML's first overall victory in 17 years of international Sportscar racing.
At the start of the race the prototypes disappeared into the distance, followed by the GTS class, headed by the Konrad Motorsport Saleen. In the highly competitive GT class the pole sitter Mike Youles, in the PK Sport Porsche, lost out to Xavier Pompidou in the Freisinger entered Porsche.
With only 15 minutes of the race completed, the safety car was deployed when the Skea Racing Porsche driven by Richard Dean dropped a trail of oil on the track after being hit from behind.
For a quarter of an hour the cars circulated behind the safety car before being released to start the race again. The Courage C60 went into the lead when the Audi dived into the pit lane for its first scheduled stop as the race entered its second hour.
For ten minutes the French team led the race before stopping for the first time, exiting the pit lane just 8 seconds adrift of the Gulf Audi driven by Stefan Johansson.
The 675 prototype of Didier Bonnet Racing was running well until the car lost a wheel when a spindle broke after completing just over two hours of the race. The GTS battle took a turn when Franz Konrad came into the pits for a driver change with Walter Brun. The Konrad team lost the lead to the RML Saleen as Bruno Lambert elected to stay in the car, saving valuable seconds, when he came into the pits on the very next lap, a lead that RML maintained for the rest of the race.
