Pierre Ragues and the Duqueine Engineering team finished in a fighting seventh position in an incident-filled 4 Hours of Silverstone today, the fourth round of the 2018 European Le Mans Series (ELMS).

Pierre and his team-mates Nelson Panciatici and Nicolas Jamin once again demonstrated strong pace and performance in the #29 Oreca 07 LMP2 car but their race was hampered after a rival LMP2 car ran into the back of him on the opening lap.

After a productive day of free practice at the 5.891km Silverstone circuit, Nicolas qualified in a strong fourth place on Saturday morning before handing over the reins to Pierre to start the four-hour race.

However, the Caen-born driver was forced to pit after just one lap, through no fault of his own, after damage sustained following the impact. The team of mechanics did an exceptional job to change to the rear end of the car, but the one minute of lost time saw them drop to the back of the field and required them to adopt a more aggressive strategy.

Pierre then began an impressive recovery drive, setting some of the quickest laps on track as they chased down the pack. Already by lap eight, Pierre had caught up the LMP2 cars before the first round of scheduled pit stops after 45 minutes.

Continuing to make his presence felt inside the top-ten, Pierre handed over to Nelson after 1h15 of the race, having put in a stunning recovery drive.

Nelson picked up where Pierre left off before Nicolas hopped into the Michelin-equipped car at the halfway mark. The performance of all three drivers enabled the Duqueine squad to put themselves in contention for the top-five. Unfortunately, a late splash and dash for fuel dropped them back to seventh, which was still a satisfactory result given the time lost at the outset of the race.

Pierre commented: “I have bittersweet feelings following today’s race. On the one hand we have shown ourselves to be strong contenders against a competitive LMP2 field, but unfortunately we don’t have much to show for our efforts. We knew we had the pace to fight for the podium, or even a victory, but the collision on the first lap was a real blow. Of course, these things can happen but it is frustrating to lose time in the pits so early on through no fault of your own. The team did a great job to get us back out and the car felt fantastic. We were able to mount a recovery drive well into the top-ten and could even have salvaged a top-five result. This is racing, and we can take positives from the excellent performance of the car, the great job from all three of us within the cockpit, the Michelin tyres and everyone in the team. It was an eventful day but an enjoyable weekend and we know we have the potential to be strong at Spa next month. As always, special thanks also to my partners GroupAuto, Yacco, Sparco and Ellip6.”

For more information, please visit www.pierreragues.com or www.quadrasports.com. Follow on Twitter @PierreRagues and @quadrasport or on Facebook.

ELMS 4 HOURS OF SILVERSTONE – TOP TEN

1 26 G-Drive Racing R. RUSINOV / A. PIZZITOLA / J. VERGNE

2 21 DragonSpeed H. HEDMAN / B. HANLEY / N. LAPIERRE

3 28 IDEC Sport P. LAFARGUE / P. CHATIN / M. ROJAS

4 39 Graff A. COUGNAUD / J. HIRSCHI / T. GOMMENDY

5 31 APR - Rebellion Racing R. CULLEN / H. NEWEY / G. MENEZES

6 23 Panis Barthez Competition T. BURET / J. CANAL / W. STEVENS

7 29 Duqueine Engineering P. RAGUES / N. JAMIN / N. PANCIATICI

8 30 AVF By Adrián Vallés K. TERESCHENKO / H. CHAVES

9 49 High Class Racing D. ANDERSEN / A. FJORDBACH

10 32 United Autosports W. OWEN / H. DE SADELEER / W. BOYD