Three women are shaking up the LMGT3 class of the World Endurance Championship. Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey and Michelle Gatting started the 6-hour race in Sao Paulo from pole position for the second time this season. As in Spa-Francorchamps, the Belgian Bovy prevailed against her 17 competitors and maneuvered the #85 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 into first place on the grid.
In Sunday’s race, the fast women’s trio were on course for their first WEC podium finish of the year for a long time until misfortune struck. After 139 laps, just under two hours before the end of the race, a water pump hose suddenly burst during the pit stop. Liters of fluid shot out of the underbody of the pink GT3 Huracan, which led to a long break for repairs.
Iron Dames miss WEC podium after technical misfortune
At this point, former DTM driver Rahel Frey was in second place behind the later-winning #92 Manthey Porsche (Malykhin, Sturm, Bachler), which now leads the World Championship table in the new GT3 category. The 911 was in a league of its own and gave the Meuspath racing team its fourth class win in the fifth race, but a podium finish for the Iron Dames seemed within reach.
Pole-setter Bovy, who as a bronze driver always competes in qualifying and the start of the race in the team, led the first 60 laps on the Formula 1 circuit in Interlagos until she had to admit defeat to bronze driver Alex Malykhin and his Manthey Porsche.
“I could have driven a little more courageously, but that would not have been good for the tire wear. That’s why we were happy with the seven-second gap,” explained Malykhin. “After 60 minutes in the second stint, I could see in which corners I was faster than Sarah. That was in turns 8 to 10 and that’s exactly where I overtook her.”
Sarah Bovy: Fastest bronze pilot at the WEC race
The 35-year-old Bovy had nothing to reproach herself for, as she was the fastest driver in the GT3 field of 17 bronze pilots that day. According to ‘The B-Pillar’, on average her fastest race laps (1:37.858 minutes on average) were just a little faster than the strong Malykhin (1:37.967 minutes on average) and also faster than her silver teammate Rahel Frey (1:38.928 minutes on average).
The third ‘Iron Lady’ in the group, Gold driver Michelle Gatting from Denmark, returned to the race with the Lamborghini after successful repairs, but by then the gap was already nine laps and unassailable. The sister – or rather brother? – Lamborghini of Iron Lynx with starting number #60 (Schiavoni, Cressoni, Perera) came in six laps behind in P14.
A bitter outcome for the only women in the WEC starting field, who last competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, they finished fifth. With the podium points they would have climbed to fourth place in the drivers’ championship, behind the two Manthey Porsches and the #31 WRT BMW.
Bovy, Frey and Gatting were denied a dream week that had begun seven days earlier with a lights-to-flag victory at the European Le Mans Series in Imola. In the ELMS, the trio relies on a Porsche 911 GT3 R and has always taken pole position in the three races so far. In the field of 14 GT3 cars, the Iron Dames are in third place overall.