TF Sport rewrite the record books at Le Mans

It was a superb start from both Fujii and Sørensen who wasted no time in climbing up the GTE AM ranking, in order to hand over to their teammates in a more comfortable position.

Between Hoshino, Fagg and Fujii, the #777 progressed swiftly to regularly sit within the top-eight, until disaster struck just before midnight. Whilst Fagg was at the wheel, chassis damage forced the silver-graded driver to limp the Vantage back to the pits and officially retire from the race. A huge disappointment for all, after showing such strong pace and potential within the early stages.

It is no secret that Keating is renowned for currently being one of the best bronze-graded drivers within endurance racing and it was his stints, particularly in the early hours of the morning, which gave #33 such a great advantage over the rest of the class. Once the TF trio had first place within their grasp, they did everything they could to not let it go.

Incredibly, the first safety car period didn’t occur until almost the 19th hour of the race! It was here the TF Sport GTE took advantage of the gap to the WeatherTech Porsche in P2.

After 24 hours of making up 18 positions, the most a Le Mans winner has ever had to overtake for the win, Keating, Chaves and the TF Sport crew watched Sørensen bring #33 over the line to claim GTE AM victory.

This was the second time TF Sport had stood on the top step of the Le Mans podium this year, as earlier in the week, TF’s crews competed in the first ever ‘pit stop challenge’, where all teams from all classes performed individually timed pit stops. The four mechanics from the #33 crew not only finished first in class, they were joint fastest overall, out of 60 teams. #777’s crew also made a great impression by coming third in class.

TF Sport’s Ben Keating and Marco Sørensen now lead the FIA World Endurance Championship, by eight points over Northwest AMR, and despite not competing in the 1000 Miles of Sebring, Henrique Chaves sits third in the GTE AM championship, 17 points ahead of the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche. D’station Racing lie 10th within the teams standings and have three rounds remaining to fight back up the ranks.

Tom Ferrier, Director of TF Sport - "This is incredible. I didn’t even dream of doing it the first time! So doing it for a second is pretty mind-blowing to be honest and it still feels like a dream now. We had a bit of an issue at the start with a tyre delamination on the #33 which lost us a bit of time and then we got into the night. The game plan was always to be as strong as possible and not make any mistakes. The plan worked and it paid off, we got the safety car break and from there on in it was a nail-biting few hours! All drivers were incredible and Ben was absolutely unbeatable!”

Photo credits - Andrew Lofthouse