World Rally Championship driver Thierry Neuville took victory on his historic circuit racing debut at the Imola Classic.
The 2024 WRC champion swapped rally machinery for a Ford Escort RS1600 and his own BMW M3 E30, competing in the Heritage Touring Car Cup category at the Le Mans Classic Series event at the Emilia-Romagna circuit. The field also included the likes of former British Touring Car Championship champions and race winners in Jake Hill, Steve Soper and Rob Huff.
While Neuville has competed full-time in the WRC for the last 15 seasons, the Belgian has previously made sporadic entries into circuit racing events and took victory in a TCR Germany touring car race in 2019.
Sharing the Escort alongside historic racing regular Raphael de Borman, the pair took a commanding (1972-1981) class victory in the first one-hour race. In the second race Neuville had to retire his BMW due to a technical issue.
“During two test sessions on Thursday I was able to discover the beautiful track of Imola while driving the BMW M3 E30 for the first time,” Neuville wrote on Instagram.
“Friday and Saturday was all about fine tuning the set-ups of both cars and slowly reaching the limits to make sure I could perform well in qualifying where we were able to take the pole position in class with the Escort and securing P2 in the M3.
“Sunday was race day with 2 races of each 1h where despite a serious penalty (classified as Gold driver) Raphael and I were able to perform at start to finish victory in HTC Race 1 while in the HTC Race 2 I unfortunately had to retire the car after one lap due to technical issues.
“Other than having a lot of fun in the cars I also enjoyed a lot the atmosphere in the paddock meeting new passionate people and the time spent with my team LifeLive Motorsport who took good care of me and our customers.”
Having declared a wish to scale back his WRC commitments next year, Neuville is hopeful he can make further Le Mans Classic Series appearances in 2027.
“Let’s see what next year brings but hopefully I will find another opportunity to be part of this series again in 2027,” he added.
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