Porsche Take One-Two in a Thrilling Six Hour Battle

Going into the final hour of the race, car #17 was out in a league of its own with a lap advantage over the scrapping second, third and forth placed cars. With a clean finish to the race the podium and their maiden win was secured. The focus in the LMP1 class was on who would take the last two podium position. As the last hour began it was the two Audis ahead of the troubled #18 Porsche. But the Porsche held the advantage in the pit stops and managed to jump both of the Audis going into the last stint of the race. Car #7 tried an early stop but still couldn’t fend off the rapid advancing Porsche. Securing their second one-two of the season, Porsche were joined on the podium by Audi car number seven. Audi had car #8 let car #7 pass towards the end of the race as it was most beneficial for them in the title fight. Mark Webber drove car #17 across the line for it’s maiden win, with Marc Lieb in the sister. Teammate Timo Bernhard was the first to meet Webber once he got out of the car, excitedly celebrating their first win together. The victory puts Bernhard, Hartley and Webber second in the championship standing, only seventeen points behind leaders Lotterer, Fässler and Tréluyer in Audi number 7 who now sit on 95 points.

KCMG finished up a strong weekend with the race win, furthering their own lead in their championship battle. G-Drive Racing cars finished second and third with #26 leading them back, not having anything to respond to KCMG’s impressive pace. With the win and pole position the team from Hong Kong scored the maximum points this weekend. There is rumour that they are considering bringing a second car into the team next year, and with such a positive result this weekend it would seem sensible for them to do that.

During the last hour of the race Porsche #92 was finally given a penalty for the contact made with #71 just before the full course yellows. But the drive through penalty they received was too little too late for the AF Corse team to regain the position that was taken from them through the accident. Porsche took another One-two as the strong performance of car #91, that had taken and retained the lead ever since AF Corse lost it due to car #51’s electrical problems at the start, and the luck that car #92 had enough advantage to retain the second position even after serving the penalty. AF Corse did managed to make it onto the bottom step of the podium with car #71 but will believe that more points and at least the step higher on the podium was robbed from them through that incident and the delayed time it took for the penalty to be served.

SMP Racing’s spectacular overtake for the lead became the move for the win. Car #72 took first place for the team after the fantastic move down into turn one, having a pace that eventual second-placed #98 couldn’t challenge. The Aston Martins really seemed to be lacking the pace this race but still managed to get one of their cars onto the podium. #96 suffered from problems that saw them finishing a long way back down the field, over forty laps down on the winning LMGTE Am car. AF Corse’s #83 finished off the Am podium, demoting Dempsey down to a class finish of forth. The Porsche team had tried an early pit stop to try and catch the field but the gap to third place got too big for them to compose an attack.

WEC returns for the Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of the Americans in three weeks time. The gap now for the championship lead is only at seventeen points, with Porsche #17 on 78 points and Audi #7 on 95. Will the Porsche team be able to continue their winning streak as we go into the day to night race, or will Audi recover the race pace and challenge them under the lights?

(images: www.fiawec.com)

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