FIA WEC Silverstone 6 Hours

The #7 Audi R18 e-tron of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoit Tréluyer took victory in a thrilling FIA World Endurance Championship opener at Silverstone, fending off challenges from both Porsche and Toyota to take the chequered flag.

The first hour of the race was dominated by the Porsche squad. Mark Webber streaked away from pole with the sister #18 Porsche 919 prototype close behind. The two were able to build a substantial lead as the Audi’s and Toyota’s squabbled over the final podium placing behind. However, the Weissach domination would not last.

At the start of the second hour, the #17 Porsche retired with a driveshaft failure, while the chasing LMP1 pack began to pick up the pace and close on the sole remaining Porsche. Audi also suffered a setback during hour 2, with the #8 car of Loic Duval, Lucas Di Grassi and Oliver Jarvis making contact with a Porsche GT car at Beckett’s. The Audi lost a lap in the pits as mechanics attended to rear bodywork damage, and the car was never able to recover, eventually finishing four laps down in 5th place.

During the third hour of the race, Neel Jani in the #18 Porsche and Marcel Fässler in the #7 Audi engaged in a titanic battle for the lead of the race. For lap after lap the two cars swapped places repeatedly, all while negotiating slower traffic around Silverstone’s fast, sweeping corners. After almost an hour of wheel to wheel racing, the cars stopped for a driver change. André Lotterer took the wheel of the leading Audi and began to pull away from the chasing pack.

Toyota and Porsche mounted challenges on the #7 Audi throughout the remainder of the race, but neither team was able to retake the lead. Late in the race however, the leading Audi was hit with a stop go penalty for a track limit infringement. Neel Jani had retaken second place in the Porsche 919 at this point, and with Audi’s lead having been cut from over 40 seconds to just 12 seconds with 13 minutes remaining, the chase was on.

Marcel Fässler in the Audi let Jani close to within 8 seconds, but was then able to manage the gap to take a very hard-fought win for Audi Sport. The #18 Porsche of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb took second place, with the #1 Toyota crew of Anthony Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima taking third position. The top three were covered by just 14 seconds at the flag, after 6 hours of flat-out competition.

In LMP2, the G-Drive Racing squad took a completely dominant 1-2 in their Ligier-Nissan’s. The #26 car of Sam Bird, Romain Rusinov and Julien Canal led the sister #28 car of Gustavo Yacaman, Luis Derani and Ricardo Gonzalez by a lap at the finish, with the #30 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX 03b of Scott Sharp, Ryan Dalziel and David Heinemeier-Hansson taking third place on track. However, this car was later excluded for excessive floor wear, promoting the Strakka Racing Dome S103 to a podium position on the cars debut.

The beautiful KCMG Oreca 05 challenged G-Drive for the LMP2 lead during the opening stages of the race, but the brand new car had a problematic run to the flag, eventually finishing 5th in class.

In GTE Pro, the #51 Ferrari 458 of Gimmi Bruni and Toni Vilander took victory, with the factory #1 Porsche taking second place. The works Aston Martin squad held the top three positions in the class in the early running, but all three cars lost huge amounts of time by pitting between two Full Course Yellow periods early in the race. All of the other GTE Pro runners pitted during the second yellow period, losing the Aston’s over a minute which they were unable to recover by the end of the race.

The GTE Am class made up for Aston’s problems in GTE Pro, with the #98 car of Paul Dalla Lana, Mathias Lauda and Pedro Lamy taking the class win, followed by the #83 AF Corse Ferrari in second and the SMP Racing Ferrari 458 in third place.

Full results can be found here.