Westbrook scores first endurance win at Monza

Double Porsche Supercup champion Richard Westbrook took the first win of his new international endurance racing career on Sunday at Monza – ironically in a race he had resigned himself to losing.

The Porsche-contracted Londoner steered his Farnbacher Racing Porsche 911 GT3-RSR to second place on the road in the Le Mans Series race, but Westbrook and Danish team-mates Allan Simonsen and Lars-Erik Nielsen were promoted to the win when the first-placed car was excluded for a technical infringement.

That was a major surprise for the team, which had struggled for pace during practice and qualifying owing to an illness for team boss and race engineer Horst Farnbacher. “Horst went down with a severe case of food poisoning and he couldn’t engineer the car all weekend,” said Westbrook. “It was Allan’s turn to qualify the car this time and it just wasn’t quick enough – it’s as simple as that.

“So Allan, Lars and I sat down and said, ‘Look, let’s just have a trouble-free race, take no risks and pick up some points, because we’re certainly not going to win it’. As it happened, we hit loads of trouble and ended up winning it!”

Westbrook started the car, and rose up the order to second. Back in for a final double-stint, Richard sought to conserve second place and maybe even challenge for the win. “I was surprised how quick we were,” he said. “But then we picked up some debris while the safety car was out and I got a puncture. 

It was a harsh blow-up and ripped some of the bodywork away.

“After I’d pitted, we got a black-and-orange flag from the officials, ordering me to the pits to repair the bumper. I was thinking, ‘We’re going to be so far down now’, so to be told we’d won was a bit of a shock. But we were due a bit of luck after going out in the first race at Barcelona with accident damage, so I’ll take that. We worked hard, really grafted, and turned it around.”

The win puts Westbrook, Simonsen and Nielsen joint third in the championship, just three points off the lead. “It’s blown the championship wide open,” said Richard. “We were all a bit down after Barcelona, but it’s like the championship’s been reset and we’re all starting again in the next round at Spa in two weeks’ time.”