There were many feelgood stories to take from the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship, but Akkodis ASP Team can inarguably lay claim to being the biggest improver of the season, after vaulting from dead last in the LMGT3 category standings in 2024 up into the top three.
Twelve months ago, the Jérôme Policand-helmed outfit was left licking its wounds following a gruelling campaign with its pair of Lexus RC Fs that yielded no finish better than sixth place, with the #78 entry concluding proceedings a lowly 16th amongst the 18 LMGT3 competitors, and the sister #87 car bringing up the rear of the order two spots further back.
Fast forward to the 2025 Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain, and a second win of the year for José María López, Clemens Schmid and Petru Umbrărescu in the #87 Lexus earned the hard-charging trio third in the title table.
The weekend did not start out under such promising auspices, however. The crew arrived in Sakhir sitting 24 points shy of the championship ‘podium’ with only 39 remaining in play, and to compound matters, they missed the entirety of the FP2 session due to a gearbox issue.
Undeterred, Clemens Schmid underscored the RC F’s raw pace by securing fourth on the grid in Hyperpole, three places behind pole-sitting team-mate Finn Gehrsitz – and while the #78’s hopes of opening its own victory account for 2025 were cruelly crushed by alternator failure approaching the one-quarter distance mark in the race, the #87 was quick to pick up the mantle.
Having initially dropped to fifth as he looked after his tyres – the Lexus’ major Achilles’ heel – Umbrărescu fought back, with Schmid subsequently relieving Lin Hodenius of the lead and swiftly pulling away. From there on, the Akkodis car was the clear class of the field in LMGT3 in Bahrain, only for a late neutralisation to bunch the pack up.
With López on older rubber than his immediate pursuers, the Argentine ace found himself under increasing threat after the re-start from Heart of Racing Team’s Mattia Drudi and Iron Lynx’s Maxime Martin. The two-time world champion had to draw upon all of his experience to keep his rivals at bay, intelligently using the traffic to his advantage to hold on by the margin of barely three-quarters-of-a-second following a truly breathless final few laps.
“Tyre degradation is our weakest point, so we knew the second stints were going to be difficult,” reflected López, whose 17th career triumph in FIA WEC made him a multiple winner in both of the series’ current classes and made Japanese marque Lexus the sixth manufacturer to record multiple GT victories. “Clemens and Petru did a great job, but every time we got a gap there was a safety car, so we had to start again!
“Towards the end, [the others] were coming fast so I had to risk every single corner and every single manoeuvre with the Hypercars, but thankfully I got a bit of help with some of them and always seemed to be in the right position at the right time and we made it. One more lap I think would have been hard…
“When I crossed the line, I couldn’t believe it – it was just an amazing feeling and an unforgettable moment. It’s been a great year for us; thank you to everyone who made it possible.”
If López’s epic final stint cemented the success, then Umbrărescu’s canny tyre preservation early on and Schmid’s stellar mid-race run were likewise key to a result that ultimately catapulted the crew from sixth up to third in the Drivers’ classification.
“That was one of the hardest-fought victories of my life,” admitted the Romanian. “None of us left anything on the table! We focused a lot on race pace from the start of the weekend, and taking care of the tyres at the beginning of the race was crucial. We managed to do that well, and then in the last stint, I think I had no more nails left to bite – it was a proper old-school, cheeks clenched ‘til the chequered flag kind of race!
“It felt amazing, and huge thanks go to the boys and girls at Akkodis and TGR Europe, and of course to my good friends and team-mates Clemens and ‘Pechito’ for an absolute masterclass in execution. It’s such a privilege to be able to work with this bunch.”
“I still can’t quite believe it,” added Schmid, who like Umbrărescu, celebrated his second FIA WEC win after first prevailing at Interlagos back in the summer, similarly using Goodyear’s hard-compound Eagle tyre. “What a wild ride this season has been and what a final race! From the very first lap to the last, we were fighting in the front pack, pushing every limit and leaving it all on-track. We never gave up.
“Racing isn’t just about speed. It’s about heart, teamwork, trust and grit, and this team stuck together through everything. A huge ‘thank you’ to the entire Akkodis ASP Team, TGR Europe and of course my brothers on and off-track, Petru and José, who are both absolute machines and delivered an unbelievable drive.
“I’m grateful beyond words and couldn’t be prouder of this bunch of legends, who did an insane job to give us a race car with which we could fight for eight hours and whose passion, precision and sleepless dedication made all of this possible. Thank you for the sweat, laughs, late nights and ‘did we seriously just do that?’ moments. To climb our way up to third in the championship is unreal, and an achievement we will never forget.”
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