Toyota dominated the first round of the 2014 World Endurance
Championship with a convincing 1-2 in the 6 Hours of Silverstone.
An early change to intermediate tyres put the car of
Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Nicolas Lapierre in a commanding position
and with the first hour out of the way, the number 8 car was never challenged,
eventually winning by over a lap.
Porsche completed the podium on their return to the top
echelon of professional sports car racing with the 20 car of Timo Bernhard,
Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley finishing third in the first outing for the new
919 Hybrid. The other Porsche of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Leib however,
retired early in the race with hydraulic issues.
Also retiring from the race were both Audis. Despite leading
early on, the reigning world champions’ pair of diesel hybrids both retired
with crash damage.
Former F1 driver Lucas di Grassi didn’t even make it to the
hour mark before he crashed as the rain arrived. A resulting suspension issue
put paid to the number 1 car’s chances whilst the sister R18 e-tron Quattro suffered
damage when Benoit Treluyer hit the barriers at Copse.
Despite his best efforts, the damage was too much and it
brought an early end to the weekend for Audi. They now face a race against time
to get two new cars built for the next round in Spa.
Audi weren’t the only world champions to endure a trying
weekend at Silverstone.
Despite starting on pole in the GTE Pro class, Ferrari couldn’t
make the most of their straight line speed advantage and after being passed by
the pair of factory Porsche 911s, never looked like they had a chance of
victory. A pit lane speeding penalty, and then a flash fire for their lead car
of Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander left them further back with the 51 car of
Bruni and Vilander eventually settling for fourth. Their second car, the 71 driven
by Davide Rigon and sports car newcomer James Calado came home fifth in what
was a trying weekend for the Italian outfit.
Porsche meanwhile dominated the class. After taking the lead
on track in the first half of the race, they claimed a comfortable 1-2 finish with
the lead Aston martin of Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke taking third.
Aston Martin took GTE Am class honours with the number 95
car of Danish Trio David Heinemeier Hansson, Kristian Poulsen and Nicki Thiim
heading home team mates Paul Dalla Lana, Christoffer Nygaard and former F1
driver Pedro Lamy. Ferrari was able to salvage something from their weekend,
with third place in GTE Am thanks to Stephen Wyatt, Michele Rugolo and Sam
Bird.
With only four cars entered, the LMP2 class was always going
to be superseded by the strongly represented LMP1 and GTE categories.
Despite delays under safety cars to fix damage, G-Drive
racing took the LMP2 win with the Morgan-Nissan of Olivier Pla, Romain Rusinow
and Julien Canal ahead of the KCMG ORECA-Nissan of Tsugio Matsuda, Matt Howson
and Richard Bradley.
All images © Dominik Wilde 2014
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