Rain-Soaked Hour One Sees Porsche Slip
- Oct 11, 2015
- 3 min read
Masses of people flocked to the Fuji track for the sixth round of the World Endurance Championship. However, the umbrellas and rain ponchos were donned quickly as the heavens opened to soak the track. The six-hour race began under safety car, with no formation lap, as the track held the fallen rainwater. The safety car period lasted for forty minutes of the first sixty as the weather conditions slowly brightened up and the cars began to form a dried line on the track.
Mark Webber managed to hold his lead on the delayed start, holding off his teammate into the first corner, but disaster struck as the wet conditions caught the Australian out and he lost the car going wide off the track. The mistake saw him slip down to P6 and the sister Porsche stream into the lead. But it wasn’t the end of the bad start for Porsche, as both the Audi’s and the number 1 Toyota took advantage of the struggling car in non-ideal conditions and all passed Romain Dumas in the same corner. Just to finish off the worst start Porsche have had all season, the Toyota #2 made contact with #18, them both taking a spin off the track and letting the front positions in class they had worked so hard for in qualifying speed off into the distance. As the hour concluded and the track began to dry out more, the two Porsches began to catch up to the pack again. Webber continued to struggle for grip, ending up in the wide run off areas more often than not, whereas Dumas optimised in the sister car, managing to gain a lot of time and end up second and closing in on #7 Audi for the lead at the end of the hour.
G-Drive #28 gained a 35-second stop/go penalty for speeding in the pit lane during the safety car period, pushing them right back to the rear of the field. Sam Bird in the #26 lead from the delayed start, but, alike Webber, took a rare off-road excursion and dropped down the field. The in-class championship-leaders #47 KCMG almost started from the pit lane from the start of the race due to an issue with the car, but decided against it just before the race started. Tandy slowly fought his way up the in class field, managing to take the lead momentarily, but more off-track action saw them drop up and down the field.
The GTE class drivers spent a lot of the safety car session jumping into the pits at different intervals to change their wet tyres to the full wet compound available. With all of the LMP cars falling off the track the grid was fairly mixed for the first few laps. In the Pro class, James Calado in the #71 AF Corse held onto their lead and managed to keep it all through the first hour, with the Porsches and the other Ferrari (#51) with no answer. The Am class, as usual, showed a tight fight. With the cars spinning and continuing quite often in the twenty minutes of actual racing in hour one, class championship leaders #72 fell to P3 in class, with Porsche #96 leading the way in the wet conditions.
More drama to evolve into the second hour as the first round of pit stops begin.
(Image: www.fiawec.com)
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