Launched this year by Patrice Lafargue, the IDEC Sport Racing team has got off to a good start. While last weekend in the Mugello offered a mixed bag of results because of mechanical problems, the IDEC Prototype and GT started the season with two wins in the VdeV championship in Barcelona and a good result in the 24 Hour Series at the Mugello.
IDEC Sport Racing Team is off to a good start. Launched earlier this year, the racing team, which competes in the GT Endurance races achieved some amazing results, both in the VdeV championship and in the 24 Hour Series. It was in the latter Championship that the season got underway with a fine fourth place on 10th January in the Dubai 24-hour race, which according to Patrice Lafargue, the head of the team and driver in the Porsche 997 Cup alongside his son Paul and Gabriel Abergel, “augurs well for the season considering the level of the competition”. He was quite right about that, as two months later, on 14th March, in the legendary Mugello, the trio took the Porsche GT to first place in the 12-Hour race, which was IDEC Sport Racing team’s first major victory.
They hardly had time to celebrate this, as the French team took part in another highly successful event on the following weekend in Barcelona with two wins in the VdeV Endurance Series: Patrice and Paul Lafargue, the title holders, came out on top firstly in the GT Endurance event in their Porsche 911 GT3-R in the 4-Hour event raced on the Catalonia circuit, before continuing well the next day with Dimitri Enjalbert, in the Prototype Endurance event on their Ligier JS 53 after a hard fought battle lasting six hours against Team Graff’s Ligier. So two wins for the first time in this circuit for the IDEC Sport Racing team (Frédéric and Nicolas Da Rochas, along with William Cavailhes, finished eighth in the prototypes with the second Ligier), which was a very pleasing result for Patrice Lafargue: “We weren’t expecting to do so well at this meeting seeing the team had only just begun. We couldn’t have imagined a better start, as this is a great result.”
Three wins in four races to start the season. It is hard indeed to imagine the team run by Jean-Claude Ruffier doing better. On the weekend of 25th-26th April, things were rather more difficult at the Mugello. “In the GT, the cylinder head gasket blew forcing us to retire, while in the Prototypes, we had a series of technical problems, with in particular a screw working loose between the engine and the gear-box which jammed our brakes before giving us a puncture, which meant we had to throw in the towel,” commented Patrice Lafargue. The Da Rochas brothers came in ninth in the GT, and William Cavailhes, thirteenth in the Prototypes.
So a mixed weekend in terms of the results, but which was nevertheless encouraging to the extent that the Porsche and the Ligier driven by the Lafargues, father and son, were up there with their rivals, particularly in the GT category, with the Ferraris on their home ground. “We were right up there as we were in fact leading before being forced to retire,” stressed Patrice Lafargue, “which proves that our wins in Barcelona weren’t down to chance.” Determined to keep his GT title this season, but also to do well in the Prototype and 24-Hour Series, the head of the IDEC Sport Racing team is already looking ahead to the next stage of the programme, and focusing on the third leg of the VdeV, which will take place on 29th, 30th and 31st May at the Aragon Motorland in Spain.
