PHENOMENALLY SUCCESSFUL YEAR OF RACING!

Phil Hanson brought the curtain down on a phenomenally successful year of racing when the young Briton finished fourth in Bahrain (14 Nov).

The 21-year-old from Sunningdale, Berkshire, along with co-drivers Paul Di Resta (GB) and Filipe Albuquerque (POR), came home less than half a minute behind the class-winning car in their United Autosports Oreca sports-prototype.

The trio started the race from pole-position after a fantastic qualifying session by Phil and Paul, marking their fourth WEC “pole" and the team's eighth consecutive LMP2 “pole".

Their #22 suffered a fuel pick-up problem moments prior to one of their pit-stops, losing around 50 seconds as the car coasted down pit-lane. They finished fourth by 28secs behind the winning car.

Hanson’s latest success in the 8-hour event brought the Briton’s final tally of victories to four in the eight-race WEC series along with two third-place finishes. Phil claimed the WEC LMP2 title in his maiden full WEC season by winning the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time in the previous WEC race.

Phil’s amazing accomplishments in 2020 also included him taking the European Le Mans Series title. Three wins and two thirds in the five-race championship giving him his first ELMS title.

Hanson is the first driver to win the LMP2 categories in the WEC, ELMS and at Le Mans in the same year. Phil is also the youngest driver ever to win a WEC title and the youngest British driver to win LMP2 at Le Mans. He was the youngest Asian Le Mans Series LMP3 champion (2016-17), the youngest European Le Mans Series outright race winner (2018) and youngest outright Asian Le Mans Series championship winner (2018-19).

Phil said: “It’s amazing to think how far we have come from a DNF at Silverstone and winning Le Mans and the championship. I’m so happy to be part of a great team with great people. The relationship has been longer than just this year though, it's been three seasons. Lots of changes throughout the time with United but I’m just really happy to be part of such a great team.”