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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