Nick Yelloly indicated that Inter Europol Competition undertook extensive practice of its long-stint approach, employing 12-lap segments, which he believes was pivotal to clinching consecutive LMP2 victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Briton repeated his success from last year at the wheel of the No. 43 Inter Europol entry, once again sharing with Tom Dillmann and Kuba Smiechowski, son of team founder Wojciech, as the squad secured its third LMP2 triumph in the last four years.
Yelloly noted that the tactic of regularly extending its stints by an extra lap to conserve fuel was instrumental in propelling both his entry and the sister No. 343 Oreca 07 Gibson of Nico Mueller, Reshad De Gerus and Bijoy Garg into contention for victory.
“Most crews were running 11 laps, and we immediately went for 12 in a row, simply to gain a fuel advantage toward the end of the race,” Yelloly told Sportscar365.
“Some teams switched to 12-lap stints as well, but it’s quite challenging to manage without proper practice, so we clearly had the edge there.
“I’m sure people will learn the tricks for next year! I think we did a fantastic job there, and all the people in the team — that credit goes to them.”
While both cars initially followed a very similar plan, Yelloly explained that the approach evolved as the race progressed, with the two cars running close to one another to avoid both pitting at the same time in neighboring boxes.
“When you’re parked side by side in the pit lane, it’s very easy to trip over each other when you’re executing the same strategy,” he said.
“We went a bit more split toward the end to ensure that didn’t happen because we had performed so well up to that point that we didn’t want to jeopardize both cars.”
While Dillmann surged past Mueller at the second Mulsanne chicane for the lead with only an hour remaining, Yelloly believed the outcome was determined by the endgame strategy more than anything else.
“I think the No. 343 tried to run a quadruple stint, and when asked, I said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that because the tires were starting to struggle a little in the heat,’” he added.
“And that was definitely the right call because Tom was flying on the double stints at the end there, so it made the difference.”
“To win again, and in a really clean fashion, purely on pace, with the sister car also challenging for the win in the last six to eight hours, we knew it would be a back-and-forth between the two cars for the entire final stretch, I wouldn’t call it awkward, but it was going to be a cycle between them.”
“To secure a 1-2 for Inter Europol as well, something they hadn’t achieved before, is quite special.”
For the first 20 hours of the race, the No. 30 Duqueine Team Oreca carried a slim edge over the Inter Europol duo, but the car retired late on with a suspected brake-disc failure on the Mulsanne Straight when Richard Verschoor was at the wheel.
Yelloly reckoned that the outcome could have been extremely close among the three squads without that issue.
“They had zero mistakes from the drivers, they were executing well in the pits, it’s just unfortunate they had the failure — our condolences to them, but that’s 24-hour racing,” he said of the Duqueine squad.
Yelloly will not have the chance to attempt a hat-trick next year, after it was announced last week that he will be among the drivers for Ford’s new Hypercar program in the FIA World Endurance Championship for 2027.
