The opening round to the 2026 Michelin Le Mans Cup Series turned out to be one of extremes for the three Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 powered crews earlier today as another combined grid of forty-four LMP3 and GT3 cars took to the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.
Just days after the official prologue test at the circuit, the weekend’s work from the British based Ecurie Ecosse Blackthorn car of Claude Bovet and Tom Canning would come to a crashing halt after the team owner suffered a heavy impact with the barriers during his earlier bronze driver test.
That would see the #91 crew sadly unable compete during today’s earlier Qualifying nor the opening two-hour race despite the team finding pace within tehir group set from their earlier Prologue performances.
That left both the #11 Code Racing Development AMR of Sebastian Moreno and Nico Hantke as well as the now #10 Racing Spirit of Leman powered duo of last year’s Code Racing Development pairing of Philipp Sager and Valentine Hasse-Clot.
With the ‘lesser’ driver taking to the track for Qualifying, it would be Moreno within the #11 who would claim the season’s first GT3 Pole Position with a best lap time of 1.3 seconds faster than his nearest class rival as well as being faster than four LMP3 crews. Sager would suffer from losing two lap times due to track limits and would have to make do with a P6 starting position in class.
The race itself would start under somewhat chaotic conditions as a Safety Car was called before the end of lap one after three or four LMP3’s came together in the opening sequence of corners and once that was cleared, the restart quickly lead into another situation that would take out the #10 car through no fault of its own.
Whilst consolidating its position at the head of the class having seen the Safet Car just removed, a silly lunge down the inside of the #11 car by the #51 Ferrari would see the Aston Martin spin and end up in the gravel with its aggressor. Whilst the Ferrari was at least able to continue, the most the #11 car was able to do was to limp back to pit lane where it sadly played no further part in the proceedings with unquantified damage.
After all of that, AMR were left with just the #10 car of Sager and Hasse-Clot where the bronze driver ran a calculated stint to enter pit lane at the end of his minimum drive time second in class leaving the second hour to the factory driver.
Immediately fast, the Frenchman was soon on the tail of the class leading #17 Ferrari and despite being forced off track momentarily during one overtake attempt had to bide his time before his next which was more successful at the ninety-minute mark.
Doubt would be thrown into the mix as whilst the #17 crew would have an additional ten seconds added to their race time for a FCY procedure fault, the same would soon be applied to the #10 car for the same reason meaning that Hasse-Clot needed to gap whoever would be P2 in class by more than that at the end to win.
Eventually, that what he was able to do as Hasse-Clit took the GT3 chequered flag to claim their first win of the season as the series now moves onto round two from Paul Ricard, France in just three weeks’ time.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media