Harry Tincknell held off Tristan Gommendy in the closing stages of the Red Bull Ring 4 Hours to clinch Jota Sport’s second European Le Mans Series win of 2015.

Filipe Albuquerque led from pole position, set by Tincknell, early on but twice his lead was eroded by the safety car. During the second stint, the TDS Racing ORECA-Nissan 05 started by Ludo Badey then double-stinted by Pierre Thiriet emerged as Jota’s main rival.

While Jota’s Simon Dolan led for much of his double stint after getting ahead of the Eurasia ORECA of Pu Jun Jin, which had gained track position by stopping under the safety car, Thiriet gradually closed the gap.

Thiriet tried everything he could to breach Dolan’s impregnable defences late in the stint before diving into the pits to hand over to Gommendy. With Dolan due to hand over to Tincknell a few minutes later, it seemed likely the TDS car would take the lead. But a combination of TDS’s slow pit stop and a safety car for debris played to Jota’s advantage as Dolan immediately stopped, allowing Ticknell to re-emerge with an extended lead.

When the race finally got back underway after an initial attempt to do so resulted in Devi Markozov shunting his BR01 heavily on the approach to the first corner, Tincknell had an advantage of around 14 seconds.

Yet another safety car for debris with 40 minutes remaining swung the race back in favour of TDS as Gommendy made his final stop for fuel while Tincknell stayed out.

Tincknell then lost the lead when he stopped for a splash of fuel with 25 minutes remaining under green-flag conditions. He retook the lead when Gommendy served a stop/go penalty for jumping a red light at the pit exit at the start of his stint, giving him a lead of 2.5 seconds.

Tincknell eventually crossed the line 27.478s clear, although the gap had been extended dramatically thanks to Gommendy spinning at Turn 2 while trying to lap the battling LM GTE Ferraris of Mikkel Mac and Matt Griffin.

The SMP Racing-run, BR Engineering-built BRO1 of Mikhail Aleshin and Anton and Kirill Ladygin claimed the car’s first podium under intense pressure from Jon Lancaster in the Greaves Gibson. This was after Nathanael Berthon lost third place in the Murphy Prototypes ORECA in the late stages when he spun after a clash with the GTE BMW of Jesse Krohn.

Mac’s last-lap pass on Griffin gave the Formula Racing Ferrari 458 Italia he shared with Johnny Laursen and Andrea Rizzoli GTE-class victory after a dramatic race.

AF Corse Ferrari trio Stuart Hall, Francesco Castellacci and Thomas Flohr won the GTC class, while in LMP3 the Team LNT Ginetta-Nissan of Charlie Robertson and cycling legend Chris Hoy took their second ELMS triumph of the season.

RESULTS – 151 LAPS: