Audi resist Toyota challenge to win at Silverstone

Audi held off a spirited challenge from Toyota to win the 6 Hours of Silverstone and secure the title of FIA World Endurance Manufacturer Champions.

Coming off the back of their second straight victory at Le Mans, the trio of Benoît Tréluyer, Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fässler finished the race as winners in their #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro.

The Toyota TS030 of Alexander Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima and Nicolas Lapierre started the race from third on the grid behind the two Audis, but Wurz got ahead of the #2 R18 ultra of Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish at the start. The Austrian driver then caught and passed the #1 when Lotterer got stuck behind traffic.

A collision with the Krohn Racing Ferrari saw the e-tron quattro handed a stop-go penalty, but Audi’s ability to go longer between stops than the Toyota allowed the #1 to win the race. Toyota still finished in second place, less than a minute behind the winners.

The #2 R18 ultra lost time when it was forced to make an unscheduled stop on lap 61 due to a slow puncture. The car came home third, 18 seconds behind the Toyota. The result was enough to see Tréluyer, Lotterer and Fässler take over at the head of the drivers’ classification, 4.5 points ahead of Kristensen and McNish.

The battle to be the top privateer LMP1 car went right down to the wire. The Rebellion Lola-Toyota of Andrea Belicchi and Harold Primat took the honours, but only after they were chased down in the closing laps by Danny Watts in the Strakka HPD he shared with Jonny Kane and Nick Leventis. Just 0.627 seconds separated the two cars at the finish line.

The other Rebellion car of Neel Jani and Nicolas Prost had led the way until a coming together of its own with the Krohn Ferrari that led to a stop-go penalty. The JRM HPD spun at the start of the race before going on to finish seventh.

There was another close fight in LMP2, where Starworks Motorsport’s Stéphane Sarrazin finished just five seconds behind class winner Jan Charouz of ADR-Delta. The Signatech Oreca-Nissan of Nelson Panciatici, Pierre Ragues and Roman Rusinov finished close behind to complete the class podium.

GTE Pro was won by Giancarlo Fisichella and Gianmaria Bruni for AF Corse, while James Walker and Jonny Cocker drove the similar Ferrari F458 Italia to second place on home soil for them and the JMW team. One final battle to be decided at the flag was third in GTE Pro, where Aston Martin’s Stefan Mücke had caught the Ferrari of Andrea Bertolini. Mücke pulled alongside going into Vale for the final time and contact between the two resulted in Bertolini spinning off track and into the gravel.

AF Corse were also victorious in GTE Am, with Piergiuseppe Perazzini, Marco Cioci and Matt Griffin taking the class win.

The next round of the WEC season is the 6 Hours of São Paulo at Interlagos in Brazil on 15 September.

Watch live action from the FIA World Endurance Championship on Motors TV.

Peter Allen