How “unorthodox” strategy pushed Shahin to Le Mans success

Australia’s Yasser Shahin was part of the Manthey EMA Porsche squad that won the LMGT3 class at Le Mans, which was made possible by some “unorthodox” strategy.

Shahin enjoyed a dream Le Mans debut by winning the double points FIA World Endurance Championship round alongside Richard Lietz and Morris Schuring in the #91 Porsche 911 GT3 R backed by The Bend Motorsport Park.

They ended up a full lap ahead of nearest rivals Augusto Farfus, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung in the #31 Team WRT BMW and the leading Ford Mustang GT3 of Dennis Olsen, Mikkel Pederen and Giorgio Roda.

To kick off its pursuit of victory, Manthey EMA was unconventional from the outset with Shahin being one of just four bronze drivers to start.

Not only that but the Australian completed a double stint where a number of showers disrupted the race.

When the rain set in, Shahin handed over to youngster Schuring, which paid off, but it meant the Aussie had to do a massive quadruple stint later on.

“There are a lot of things that were unconventional about Manthey’s approach,” Shahin told Autosport.

“It started to rain and we thought we really wanted an early advantage in mixed conditions, so we put Morris in with fresh tyres and that paid off.

“But it meant that I didn’t do the planned triple stint and I only did a double and then when I got in the car two hours later, we knew it was going to be a struggle to make up my (minimum six-hour driving) time.

“So three stints in, the engineer and I had a chat and he said ‘Look, can you do a fourth?’

“So I did a quadruple stint, and that’s not particularly orthodox on one set of tyres! I’ve never done a quad before.”

Shahin was back in the hot seat in the early hours of Sunday morning during the lengthy Safety Car period to complete his time.

He said this opened up options for the back end with Lietz and Schuring ready to attack for the chequered flag.

“Me staying in the car longer not only made them fresher, it meant that if we could defer my pitstop to as late as possible, to the track going green, whoever got in would have the freshest set of tyres,” Shahin said.

Now after victory at Le Mans, following their maiden success at Spa, Lietz/Schuring/Shahin find themselves in the lead of the LMGT3 FIA WEC standings.

They sit equal on points with Qatar winners Klaus Bachler, Alex Malykhin and Joel Sturm.

Shahin admits he is stunned to be at the top of the table after a tough start finishing 15th and 16th in Qatar and Spa.

“I thought we had no chance. We had a throttle body failure in race one, completely unlucky,” he said.

“Race two was just a debacle and genuinely none of our fault.

“A 200 km/h race start, followed by people hitting the brakes after it went green.

“We threw away the first two and so we had no prospect of being back in the championship.

“This has just reversed all that with two consecutive wins.

“Morris and Richie were just saying ‘look I can feel we’re good enough. We just need some momentum and so it’s been nice.”

The next FIA WEC event is the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo at Interlagos on July 14.

Photo by LAT Images

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