Toyota wins 6 Hours of Spa over Audi, Porsche

Anthony Davidson, Nicolas Lapierre and Sebastien Buemi took their second win in two races in their Toyota Racing Toyota TS040 hybrid with a dominant victory at the WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium in front of a massive crowd that numbered in excess of 46,000 over the two days.  The early pace was set by the No. 14 Porsche of Neel Jani but a slow pitstop allowed the Toyota to get ahead, a lead the trio never lost until the chequered flag.

The no1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Lucas di Grassi, Tom Kristensen and Loic Duval finished a distant second and just 6.9 seconds ahead of the second Toyota of Alex Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima and Stephane Sarrazin after a quick last pitstop got Duval back out ahead.  The No. 7 Toyota suffered from severe oversteer early in the race but Sarrazin kept the car on track until the first pitstop and after that the car was on the pace until the end of the race.

After starting on pole position, the No. 14 Porsche of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb led for the first part of the race but the slow stop was compounded by an electrically problem that delayed Dumas for three laps as he desperately tried to reset the systems onboard the 919.  This resulted in the car taking the checkered flag just off the podium in 4th.  Their teammates in the No. 20 had an event they would probably rather forget with several problems including rear dampers and a drive shaft failure meant they finished well down the order 23 laps behind the leaders.

The No. 2 Audi finished in 5th overall after several issues delayed the car.  Benoit Treluyer, Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler finished 1 lap ahead of the no3 Audi that was being run as an additional car in Le Mans trim.

The brand new Rebellion Racing R-One Toyota, which was having its first real test, suffered from some teething troubles but the team came away with some positives when the no12 car of Nicolas Prost, Mathias Beche and Nick Heidfeld completed the race distance in 7th overall, 10 laps behind the leading Toyota.  The No. 13 R-One wasn’t so co-operative and only completed 47 race laps.

In LMP2 the day belonged to G-Drive Racing as Roman Rusinov, Olivier Pla and Julien Canal also won their second race in two starts in 2014.  A dominant performance didn’t get off to the best starts as the Morgan-Nissan was forced wide at the first corner.  However the Russian team soon hit the front of the class and then didn’t look back during the rest of the race.  Even a stop to repair a broken headlight failed to stop them reaching the chequered flag 71 seconds ahead of the Jota Sport Zytek of Simon Dolan, Harry Tincknell and Marc Gene who in turn were 1 lap ahead of the No. 47 KCMG Oreca.

The Chinese team started on pole position but damage to the front of the car early caused by flying debris caused problems with the aerodynamics that left the drivers struggling for front end grip and severe tire wear.

The two SMP Racing Orecas finished 4th and 5th in class.  A great start by Nicolas Minassian in the no27 was judged to have been too good and a stop go penalty resulted in the French driver being dropped down the order.