It was the race nobody wanted to win at Spa, with endurance being the key word on a day where Audi was the last manufacturer willing to keep their hand on the winners’ trophy.
The win – quite rightly going to an LMP1 hybrid – could quite easily have gone to a non-hybrid car. Well technically. The championship-leading number two Porsche lost its hybrid power early on into the stint, leaving Marc Lieb to soldier on with a mere 500bhp and losing some seven seconds a lap to their opposition, yet still finishing in the runner-up position against privateer (and normally aspirated) Swiss outfit, Rebellion Racing.
Toyota were on a mission and enjoying much better tyre life than both Audi and Porsche, effectively able to double stint their tyres and in the process seize the lead at the end of the first hour. A remarkable effort considering the Toyota’s started on the softer Michelin compounds, although Mike Conway endured a nervous moment clouting the rear of the number 37 SMP entry, but managed to continue after pitting for a new nose.
Timo Bernhard would close up behind the leading TS050 of Sebastien Buemi until a front left puncture forced the reigning champion to pit – losing second and third in the process. Mark Webber would step in as the tyre was changed and new nose cone was fitted.
Webber would only get thirteen minutes running time before a puncture on the same wheel would force the number one Porsche to pit once again and be wheeled into the garage.
However, Webber’s teammate Brendon Hartley would be back in the pits just 20 minutes later however to repair bodywork damage and front gearbox issue linking the hybrid drive to the front axle. Loic Duval would pit the number seven Audi at the same time Kamui Kobayashi brought in the number five Toyota.
Both would change to fresh tyres with a two second advantage not helping Toyota gain track position in the pits, but with Audi’s Loic Duval pitting again with a temperature issue would hand the number five car a free goal.
That was until a collective groan rang out at Raidillon as the number five TS050 of Kazuki Nakajima expired in a plume of white smoke. Only a lap earlier it looked like lapping its nearest competitor in Oliver Jarvis, only for the number eight Audi to inherit the lead. Even more remarkably Neel Jani was crawling to a number two spot with zero hybrid power with the number 13 Rebellion set for a podium berth.
Audi from Porsche from Rebellion was probably the longest odds imaginable this morning, but proving the Swiss outfit’s decision to focus on reliability over development was a shrewd one indeed – a decision that ow sees them second in the World Endurance Championship heading into Le Mans.
Spa is a six hour race. Le Mans is a mammoth twenty-four and is only a month away. It’s approximately an entire Formula One season over one weekend and if the factory outfits can’t get their house in order, there’s the very real possibility of a privateer team taking the ultimate prize in sports car racing’s blue riband event.
But with only three privateer entries fielded across two teams, the law of averages may even weight in favour of an LMP2 entry. That’s like the prospect of Leicester City winning the Premier League… Hang on a sec.
The LMP2 grid is the strongest it’s been since the inception of the World Endurance Championship and any one of the cars represented by G-Drive, Manor, ESM, Signatech Alpine or Strakka can easily find themselves at the pointy-end of the top ten. From there it only takes a mechanical slip-up, fumbled pit-stop or an incident with a back-marker for the race to slip through the remaining LMP1’s fingers.
Such feel-good stories only present themselves on the day of the event, but be sure the bookies will this year will be looking at every eventuality. Anyone who put a few bob on Brawn GP in March 2009 will know exactly what I’m talking about.
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