James Allen’s Algarve Pro Racing’s #25 Oreca has finished third at the inaugural 4 Hours of Aragon in the European Le Mans Series, where United Autosports took its first win of the season.
It was the first race at the Spanish circuit for the series, which saw an afternoon daylight start before teams drove into the night.
The podium result for Allen came after the team overcame a disastrous qualifying session, with the Australian stopped on track early with a brake issue.
Having shown competitive pace in the first two free practice sessions, with second in Free Practice 1 and sixth in Free Practice 2, the qualifying issues saw the #25 Oreca start last on the 42-car field.
Allen was at the wheel for the start of the race, the Perth native wasting no time in getting the Oreca to the front, breaking into the top 10 only 25 minutes into the race.
At the halfway point, the #25 was third in the field with the eventual winners, and fifth heading into the final hour before a Full Course Yellow shook up the order.
The Algarve team led the race briefly with Alex Lynn behind the wheel during the final round of pit stops, staying in touch with the top two cars to finish third in the four-hour event, only 25.257s adrift of the winning United Autosports entry of Marino Sato, Oliver Jarvis, and Phil Hanson.
The winning #22 Oreca crossed the finish line 14.987s ahead of the #28 IDEC Sport entry of Paul Lafargue, Laurents Hoerr, and Paul-Loup Chatin.
Allen’s #25 Portuguese team now sits in second place in the European Le Mans Series LMP2 Drivers’ standings, a single point behind leaders, the #30 Duqueine Team of Neel Jani/Nicolas Pino/Rene Binder on 51 points.
Round 4 of the European Le Mans series will take place on 21 September at the 4 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.
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