The LMP1 hands shown at Silverstone

Audi ended its winning drought at Silverstone, Porsche qualified on pole with ease and the Toyota was excellent on its tyres.

But we could probably have predicted all those things ahead of last weekend's opening round of the World Endurance Championship. So what did we really learn from the WEC opener as we look forward to the rest of the season?

The answer is probably not a lot.

It might be controversial to say this of such an exciting race, but the Silverstone 6 Hours really did go according to form. Someone asked me before the event who was going to win, and my reply was Audi. And I don't think I was being in any way clever in my prediction.

The latest R18 e-tron quattro - like last year's version, a high-downforce racing car designed to be super quick in the fast corners - was always going to be in its element around the fast sweeps of the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. Remember, it would probably have won the event last year but for the changeable conditions that resulted in Audi Sport Team Joest heading for home with two badly damaged monocoques.

The 2015 Audi retains the high-speed corner advantage its predecessor enjoyed © XPB

Silverstone is almost certainly going to be the Audi's best circuit for the 'sprint' version of the R18. That's not only a result of its strengths, but also the weaknesses of its rivals. Silverstone is probably the least favourable circuit for Porsche and Toyota, and for slightly different reasons.

The Toyota TS040 HYBRID and the Porsche 919 Hybrid generate more of their performance from their energy retrieval systems because they respectively run in the six and eight megajoule classes, whereas Audi is homologated in the 4MJ division. That means around the 3.67-mile Silverstone lap they needed to retrieve 4.02 and 5.36MJ respectively to get the full benefit from their hybrid systems.

Whether they could actually regenerate the full amount they are allowed to discharge on a circuit without too many big braking zones isn't clear, but they had an advantage nonetheless. The sight of Neel Jani repeatedly blasting his Porsche back past Marcel Fassler down the Wellington Straight after the Audi had got ahead around the outside between Village and The Loop was evidence of that.

Toyota has a bigger problem than Porsche because it retrieves via two kinetic braking systems, one on each axle. The German manufacturer supplements its front-axle recuperation with an exhaust-gas driven system, but on the other hand it was trying to achieve a higher figure. Even if it was hitting that mark - and it almost certainly wasn't - Porsche still counts Silverstone as arguably its worst track, courtesy of the lower-downforce philosophy of the 919.

The Porsche's straightline speed made it hard to get past and escape © XPB

That all might suggest that such a narrow victory on a track where it should have been superior will be of little comfort to Audi. But the reality is that the winning margin could have been much greater.

It would have been at least half a minute but for Fassler's late-race stop-go penalty and can you imagine how far it would have been ahead had the winning car not been bottled up behind Porsche for nearly half the race? If the winning trio of Fassler, Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer had got ahead earlier, they would have been able to exploit the Audi's aerodynamic superiority in clear air.

There was further good news to come out of Silverstone for Audi. It appears to have taken two steps forward with the heavily-reworked R18. It looked a much more manoeuvrable machine in the slow-speed corners than its predecessor and, on a relatively cold day, there were none of the tyre warm-up issues that afflicted the original version of the car in 2014.

So that's Audi covered off, but what about Porsche and its all-new 919 Hybrid?

The Webber/Hartley/Bernhard Porsche led until encountering gearbox problems © LAT

It locked out the front row, but then it probably should when it is able to head out for qualifying with a fully-charged 8MJ hybrid system. That advantage means its rivals - particularly Audi - are suggesting that there will be little point making a bid for pole over the course of this season. Le Mans, where the amount of energy that can be deployed per kilometre is lower, might be different.

Porsche's performance provided conflicting evidence about whether the redesign of the 919 Hybrid has overcome the mid-corner understeer that resulted in an unhealthy appetite for its tyres last season. It didn't double stint a whole set at any time during the race, which backed up concerns it has been happy to voice that it isn't quite there yet. It is also worth pointing out that Silverstone isn't a particularly hard track on tyres.

Yet Jani's speed over his final stint, with fresh tyres only on the more-loaded left side of the car, very much suggested that advances have been made. He was able to pull away from Toyota driver Sebastien Buemi in the final 10-minute dash for the flag and make inroads into Fassler's lead.

Third place for reigning champion Toyota might have looked like an average result to start its title defence, but Anthony Davidson reckoned he was quite happy to take the final spot on the podium together with Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima. He and fellow world champ Buemi might have won at Silverstone last year together with Nicolas Lapierre, but he admits that they got lucky this time.

The Toyota remains very tyre-friendly, which paid dividends in 2014 © LAT

What the heavily-revised TS040 probably did show over the race at Silverstone is that it has retained its trump card, something that didn't look so clear cut after the official WEC test at Paul Ricard in March.

The strong suit of last year's championship-winning version was the way it looked after its Michelin tyres, and the new one looked equally strong. Toyota was the first to start double-stinting its tyres and Davidson was able to set one of his fastest race laps in the 1m42s bracket eight laps before the end of his stint, and then banged in a run in the 1m43s.

The respective 2015 challengers from Audi, Porsche and Toyota performed how we expected them to at Silverstone, which kind of makes it hard to draw conclusions about the rest of the season. And that's without even considering the Le Mans 24 Hours, when all three will run in low-downforce configuration.

Will Audi's move into the 4MJ class allow it to be competitive on the point-and-squirt Tilkedromes of the second half of the season? We don't know. Does the Porsche really look after its tyres? There's conflicting evidence there. And has Toyota done enough to stay ahead in the face of opposition from an all-new Porsche and a nearly-new Audi? The jury is still out on that one.

What we probably learnt at Silverstone is that all three manufacturers are in the game with their P1 contenders. Audi Sport Team Joest boss Ralf Juttner probably summed it up best with the words: "We now know that it is going to be a very tight season, but not a lot else."