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Mark Webber broke his WEC duck as he and teammates Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley took their maiden group victory at the Nurburgring, leading home a dominant Porsche 1-2.
The #17 Porsche 919 Hybrid had an early scare after having to replace a front nose when their splitter was damaged during Timo Bernhard’s stint.
The Bernhard/Webber/Hartley combination immediately found more pace and took the mantle after the sister #18 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Marc Lieb, Neel Jani and Romain Dumas lost time when three penalties were served for exceeding the fuel flow allowance on the car.
An engine sensor that controls the fuel flow had failed on the No.18 Porsche 919 Hybrid. Porsche had not used the most recent homologated fuel-flow sensor that thwarted Audi’s race at Le Mans and appeared to be paying the same penalty despite the #17 car experiencing a clean run.
“Achieving the second one-two after Le Mans is great for our team. This is my first Porsche victory and, of course, it is a big day for Brendon, Timo and myself, and it is always a team effort” said Webber.
“The two of them were awesome. We had no technical issues and took an important step by improving our performance on shorter tracks. Traffic was sometimes brutal today, but we made it.”
After emerging from his first penalty, Marc Lieb engaged in a bit of wheel-banging with Webber, which briefly saw the cars touching at turn two and crank Wolfgang Hatz’s blood pressure up a few notches. However, the two longer penalties, 30-seconds and 60-seconds respectively, eventually saw the #18 have to settle for second.
Neel Jani saw off the advances of both of the Audi R18 e-tron quattro’s in during final hour, while Andre Lotterer eventually slipped by Lucas DiGrassi for the final podium position during the dying moments, keeping intact #7’s podium record in 2015.
“We’d have liked to have battled for victory in our home race in front of a large crowd as we did at the beginning of the season,” said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. “But we had to accept that Porsche were stronger today. In the standings, our drivers have maintained a remarkable advantage. This means we can expect a thrilling second half of the season.”
Toyota Racing finished its home race in fifth and sixth positions after a clean run to the chequered flag. The reigning champions – Anthony Davidson, Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi in the No.1 Toyota TS 040 headed home the No.2 crew of Stephane Sarrazin, Alex Wurz and Mike Conway.
“We did a perfect job today from our side; there was no more that we could have done” said Anthony Davidson. “Thanks to the engineers and mechanics for a good day’s work, with no issues at all. We are all looking forward to the upcoming races to see if we have some better chances; we are not going to give up pushing. We gave everything today and at least it was good fun trying.”
Pierre Kaffer and Simon Trummer steered ByKolles to the top spot of the LMP1 privateer despite their AER-powered CLM P1/01 losing its rear wing on the main straight after a pit-stop. Kaffer performed an extraordinary job in pulling up CLM P1/01 the avoid the leading LM GTE Pro class battle.
ByKolles were able to take advantage of Rebellion Racing’s woes as the Swiss team continued to struggle with electrical problems. The #13 car returned to their garage early on while The #12 Rebellion R-One claimed second in the class but was delayed after stopping on track during the second hour.
KCMG scored an emphatic second win after their ground-breaking Le Mans victory to extend its title leads in the drivers’ and teams’ title fight.
Nick Tandy gave onlookers a scare as the #47 entry failed to move away on the formation lap, but once away the outright Le Mans winner immediate stole a march on both G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan entries.
KCMG’s lead eroded after the second scheduled stops, Matt Howson was able to chase down Roman Rusinov’s No.26 G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan and once again put daylight between them.
Richard Bradley again had to battle his way back up from sixth after the final stops, but put in some sizzling times to extended their LMP2 title lead to 15 points.
While unable to keep pace with the #47 entry, G-Drive Racing claimed a fine double podium position.
In LM GTE Pro, Porsche Team Manthey scored a superb 1-2 to vault Ferrari in the battle for the FIA World Endurance Cup for Manufacturers.
The normally bulletproof #51 AF Corse Ferrari hit electrical issues after just 15 minutes of racing, allowing the #91 entry of Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen to lead the majority of the six hrs and give Christensen his debut WEC win and hand Team Manthey the FIA World Endurance Cup for GT Drivers points table, just a single point ahead of James Calado and Davide Rigon.
Frederic Makowiecki was penalised for having jumped the start and was making ground back after a stop-go penalty before collecting the #71 AF Corse Ferrari 458 of James Calado; the incident causing a puncture to the Ferrari and some light bodywork damage for the Porsche. The two cars later engaged in a titanic duel with second drivers Patrick Pilet and Davide Rigon, but not even a drive-through penalty for the #91 car (as a result of the contact with Calado) was enough to put a dent in their lead.
The fifth round of the World Endurance Championship will take place on 19th September at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
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