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Nurburgring WEC: Porsche's champions get first win of 2016

Reigning World Endurance champions Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley notched up their first victory of the 2016 season at the Nurburgring

Their Porsche 919 Hybrid crossed the line with Bernhard at the wheel nearly a minute clear of the best of the Audi R18 e-tron quattros shared by Oliver Jarvis, Lucas di Grassi and Loic Duval in second place.

Webber said: "This is a brilliant win for our car.

"We had an early puncture, but we kept our heads down and hung in there, and the Audis ran out of a bit of steam."

The latest high-downforce versions of the respective LMP1 challengers from Porsche and Audi looked equally matched early in the race.

Both Audis took turns in the lead during the opening hours, but Porsche began to take a grip on the race from shortly before half distance.

The second 919 shared by championship leaders Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas held a narrow lead over its sister car until early in the fifth hour when Lieb tangled with a backmarker.

Time was lost changing the nose, but Jani was back in the lead with an hour and half to go before having to take a drivethrough for avoidable contact.

That put him behind Duval, who held him up sufficiently for Lotterer to catch and then pass the Porsche at the second attempt.

Jani sustained rear end damage when he was tagged by a slower car as Lotterer made his first passing bid, which resulted in an unscheduled stop to replace bodywork.

Lotterer, who shared the #7 Audi with only Marcel Fassler in the absence of the injured Benoit Treluyer, finished on the tail of his team-mate in third.

Jani crossed the line in fourth, still well clear of the two Toyotas in fifth and sixth positions.

The Signatech Alpine squad made it a hat-trick of LMP2 wins following its victories at the Spa round in May and last month's Le Mans 24 Hours.

Nicolas Lapierre, Stephane Richelmi and Gustavo Menezes triumphed by 16s aboard their Alpine-badged ORECA-Nissan 05.

Second place went to the RGR Sport Ligier-Nissan JSP2 shared by Filipe Albuquerque, Bruno Senna and Ricardo Gonzalez.

The pole-winning G-Drive ORECA led for most of the opening couple of hours in the hands of Rene Rast and then Alex Brundle before transmission problems put it out of the race in hour three.

Ferrari finished one-two in GTE Pro, Gianmaria Bruni and James Calado's AF Corse-run 488 GTE leading home the sister car of Sam Bird and Davide Rigon by half a minute.

Aston Martin led the class for much of the race with the Vantage GTE shared by Nicki Thiim and Marcos Sorensen.

The Danish trio looked on course for second before losing time when they made their final pitstop under green-flag conditions rather than the full course yellows of their rivals.

Thiim dropped to fourth, but moved back into the podium positions when the third-placed Ganassi Ford GT of Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla had to take a drivethrough penalty for a pitstop infringement.

Aston won GTE Am with the Vantage shared by Pedro Lamy, Mathias Lauda and Paul Dalla Lana.

RESULTS - 194 LAPS:

Pos Class Driver Team Car Gap
1 LMP1 T.Bernhard, M.Webber, B.Hartley Porsche Team Porsche 6h01m16.183s
2 LMP1 L.di Grassi, L.Duval, O.Jarvis Audi Sport Team Joest Audi 53.787s
3 LMP1 M.Fassler, A.Lotterer Audi Sport Team Joest Audi 54.483s
4 LMP1 R.Dumas, N.Jani, M.Lieb Porsche Team Porsche 1m37.324s
5 LMP1 A.Davidson, S.Buemi, K.Nakajima Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota 1 Lap
6 LMP1 S.Sarrazin, M.Conway, K.Kobayashi Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota 4 Laps
7 LMP1 M.Tuscher, D.Kraihamer, A.Imperatori Rebellion Racing Rebellion/AER 16 Laps
8 LMP2 G.Menezes, N.Lapierre, S.Richelmi Signatech Alpine Alpine/Nissan 16 Laps
9 LMP2 R.Gonzalez, B.Senna, F.Albuquerque RGR Sport by Morand Ligier/Nissan 16 Laps
10 LMP2 R.Dalziel, P.Derani, C.Cumming Extreme Speed Motorsports Ligier/Nissan 18 Laps
11 LMP2 N.Leventis, L.Williamson, J.Kane Strakka Racing Gibson/Nissan 18 Laps
12 LMP2 T.Graves, A.Pizzonia, M.Howson Manor ORECA/Nissan 18 Laps
13 LMP2 V.Petrov, V.Shaytar, K.Ladygin SMP Racing BR Engineering/Nissan 19 Laps
14 LMP2 D.Cheng, H-Pin Tung, N.Panciatici Baxi DC Racing Alpine Alpine/Nissan 19 Laps
15 LMP2 N.Minassian, M.Mediani SMP Racing BR Engineering/Nissan 19 Laps
16 LMP2 S.Sharp, E.Brown, J.van Overbeek Extreme Speed Motorsports Ligier/Nissan 22 Laps
17 LMP1 N.Prost, N.Heidfeld, M.Beche Rebellion Racing Rebellion/AER 23 Laps
18 GTE Pro G.Bruni, J.Calado AF Corse Ferrari 24 Laps
19 GTE Pro D.Rigon, S.Bird AF Corse Ferrari 24 Laps
20 GTE Pro N.Thiim, M.Sorensen Aston Martin Racing Aston Martin 24 Laps
21 GTE Pro S.Mucke, O.Pla Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK Ford 25 Laps
22 GTE Pro R.Stanaway, D.Turner Aston Martin Racing Aston Martin 25 Laps
23 GTE Pro R.Lietz, M.Christensen Dempsey Racing - Proton Porsche 25 Laps
24 GTE Am P.D.Lana, P.Lamy, M.Lauda Aston Martin Racing Aston Martin 28 Laps
25 GTE Am F.Perrodo, E.Collard, R.Aguas AF Corse Ferrari 28 Laps
26 GTE Am Y.Yamagishi, P.Ragues, P.Ruberti Larbre Competition Chevrolet 29 Laps
27 GTE Am K.Al Qubaisi, D.H.Hansson, P.Long Abu Dhabi-Proton Racing Porsche 30 Laps
28 GTE Am M.Wainwright, A.Carroll, B.Barker Gulf Racing Porsche 30 Laps
29 GTE Pro M.Franchitti, A.Priaulx, H.Tincknell Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK Ford 39 Laps
- GTE Am C.Ried, W.Henzler, J.Camathias KCMG Porsche Disqualified
- LMP2 M.Rao, R.Bradley, R.Merhi Manor ORECA/Nissan Retirement
- LMP1 S.Trummer, O.Webb, P.Kaffer ByKOLLES Racing Team CLM/AER Retirement
- LMP2 R.Rusinov, R.Rast, A.Brundle G-Drive Racing ORECA/Nissan Retirement


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