Round 3 of the 2025 Michelin Le Mans Cup was the annual trip to Le Mans, with 2025 being the tenth edition of the Road To Le Mans.
With two 60-minute races the points awarded are slightly different to the usual 2-hour races, with the winners of each race receiving 15 points instead of 25 points, 9 instead of 18 for second and 7 instead of 15 for third. Also,the race-by-race entries for the RTLM and these cars do not count when the championship points are awarded.
In LMP3 the no87 CLX Motorsport left Le Mans still at the head of the LMP3 championship table despite only securing 3 points in Race 1 and zero points in Race 2. This extended the championship lead of Alvise Rodella and Pierre-Alexandre Provost from 1 point to 4 points over their teammates in the no97 CLX Motorsport Ligier, with David Droux and Cedric Oltramare failing to score in either race.
The big winners in the two Road To Le Mans races were the no85 R-ace GP Duqueine of Hugo Schwarze and Hadrien David and the no50 23Events Racing Ligier of Lena Buhler and Matteo Quintarelli.
The no85 R-ace GP Duqueine finished second in both races, but with race 1 being won by the no37 CLX Motorsport Ligier, which was a non MLMC entry, the Franco-German pairing took 15 points for race 1 and 9 points for race 2. This moved them up from 6th to 3rd in the standings and head to the next round on 38-points, just 9 points behind the championship leaders.
Victory in race 2, combined with 5 points in race 1, moved the no50 Ligier up to 4th on 33 points after Le Mans.
It was a good week in Le Mans for the LMP3 Pro/Am championship leaders Stefan Aust and Felipe Fernandez-Laser in the no71 Rinaldi Racing Ligier-Toyota. The German pairing headed to Le Mans with a 3-point lead and left with a 28-point advantage after they scored a maximum 30-points from the two races.
In race 1 the no71 Ligier took the chequered flag to record Aust and Fernandez-Laser’s first win of the season. In race 2 they finished second on the road behind the no2 DKR Engineering Ginetta but, as this was a non-championship points scoring car, Rinaldi Racing scored another 15-points towards the championship.
The no84 ANS Motorsport Ligier remains in second place after scoring five points in Le Mans, while the no98 Motorsport98 Ligier moved up from 5th to 3rd in the standings to a good haul of 16 points from the two races.
The no51 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 of Alessandro Cozzi and Eliseo Donno headed to Le Mans in 4th place in the standings and left leading the GT3 championship by two points, on 50 points, thanks to a haul of 26 points from the two races.
In Race 1 the Italian team finished second on the road behind the no14 Getspeed Mercedes-AMG, but as the first MLMC car to finish the race they gathered the maximum 15-points. In race 2 the no51 Ferrari finished 5th in class behind the winning no65 Team Motopark Mercedes-AMG but were awarded 9-points because the three cars that finished 2nd, 3rd and 4th were all non points scoring cars.
The Le Castellet race winning no11 Code Racing Development Aston Martin Vantage heads to the next round in Belgium on 48 points after Philipp Sager and Rory Van Der Steur scored 5 points in race 1 and didn’t finish race 2. The no33 Kessel Racing Ferrari secured 15 points in the two Road To Le Mans races to remaining in third place on 46 points, nine ahead of their teammates in the no33 Ferrari 296.
CLICK HERE for the championship standings after Round 3, the Road to Le Mans.
The next round of the 2025 Michelin Le Mans Cup will be in Spa-Francorchamps on Saturday 23rd August.
