Silverstone: FIA World Endurance Championship, Round 1

A storming final stint from Allan McNish saw Audi take a thrilling victory in the first round of the 2013 World Endurance Championship at Silverstone. The Scot pulled back a deficit of over 30 seconds over the final 40 minutes of the six hour event to snatch a last gasp victory over the sister Audi R18 e-tron, in the car he shared with Tom Kristensen and Loic Duval.

The two Audi LMP1 prototypes battled each other for the lead throughout the race, on a day when the German marque asserted its dominance over rivals Toyota. The #1 Audi held the lead during the early stages, with Andre Lotterer building a lead of 12 seconds over Kristensen before handing over to Marcel Fassler. A front driveshaft failure on the #1 car robbed it of hybrid power, and it was this, along with an inspired drive from McNish, that set up a grandstand finish, with the #2 car catching and passing Benoit Treluyer with less than five minutes of the race to go.

Toyota were not in the same league on raceday, despite having locked out the front row of the grid in a damp qualifying session. Having elected to use the 2012 spec TS030 Hybrid prototype, the Japanese manufacturer did not have the pace to put up a fight against Audi. The #7 car of Anthony Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Stephane Sarrazin took the final podium place, a lap adrift of the winners.

In LMP2, the win was taken by the G-Drive ADR run Oreca-Nissan of Antonio Pizzonia, Tor Graves and James Walker, after a race long battle with the best of the Oak Racing Morgan-Nissan’s. Lotus’ brand new LMP2 prototype made its race debut at Silverstone, but both cars endured a nightmare weekend, with neither being classified at the end.

In GTE, Aston Martin dominated both the Pro and Am classes, with F1 refugee Bruno Senna taking victory alongside Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke. Fellow former F1 racer Kamui Kobayashi took a distant second in the factory Ferrari F430 he shares with Toni Vilander. In GTE Am, Christoffer Nygaard, Kristian Poulsen and Allan Simonsen took a dominant 3 lap victory over the Labre run Chevrolet Corvette.