It’s been an up-and-down year for JMW Motorsports. The British sports car team have regularly competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for several years but were denied an entry to Le Mans this year. They responded with a very strong campaign in the European Le Mans Series and headed into the season’s final race, the 4 Hours of Estoril in Portugal, they needed only to finish the race in 7th place of 8 entries to clinch a title in the ELMS’ GTE class. Even then, Aston Martin Racing’s #99 car would need a win to make up the points deficit. Everything looked good early in the race after another Ferrari retired, leaving only seven cars in the class.

However, gearbox problems sidelined them for a while, but knowing they would need to finish the race to remain classified, JMW sent the car back onto the track to just make laps in the hope they’d finish enough laps (75 percent of the winner’s total) to finish the race classified seventh. However, almost immediately after rejoining the track, American driver Mike Guasch spun his United Autosports Ligier JS P3 car and speared into the side of the JMW Motorsports Ferrari 458. There was no coming back from that and unable to finish enough of the race to be classified, JMW also ailed to score enough points to hold off Aston Martin Racing. Aston’s trio of Darren Turner, Alex MacDowall, and Andrew Howard won the class at Estoril to steal the championship away.

The LMP2 class also saw a stunning turn of events when the Thiriet by TDS prototype which needed only to finish fourth place or better to take the championship, failed to restart after a pitstop. They lost enough time fixing the problem to have no chance of finishing fourth. G-Drive Racing’s Gibson 015, in its last-ever race before new LMP2 regulations end its ELMS run, managed to drive to the championship with Harry Tincknell, Giedo Van Der Garde, and Simon Dolan at the wheel.

Guasch, ironically, was the co-champion of the LMP3 class along with Alex Brundle and Chritian England. The United Autosport drivers had clinched that title with a second-place finish at the penultimate round at Spa Francorchamps.