Following a dominant performance in the west in Great Britain, the trio of drivers in the #8 Toyota TS040 Hybrid LMP1 prototype, Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Nicolas Lapierre, took control of the 6 Hours of Spa with just over four hours to go, passing the hard-charging Porsche 919 Hybrid that Neel Jani dramatically raced away from the pack in the race’s opening stints.
The #8’s victory, by 1m 13.657s over the #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro diesel LMP1 prototype of Tom Kristensen, Loic Duval and Lucas di Grassi, sends a strong and ominous message to the rest of the sports car world ahead of next month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Make no mistake, the Japanese squad are going to be contenders when the series rolls into Circuit de la Sarthe for the French endurance classic.
After an encouraging start to their debut WEC campaign, the day at Spa was not so successful for the Porsche team. The #20 Porsche of Australia’s Mark Webber, New Zealand’s Brendan Hartley and German Timo Bernhard, spent a lot of time in the garage inside the first hour, never challenged, and finished twenty-three laps down and, ironically in twenty-third place, when it took the checkers.
The sister car was a different story. Jani’s opening stint was a thing of beauty. He was ahead by more than a second after one lap, and streeted the field for the opening ninety minutes, before being overtaken coming out of the pits after a slow stop, and suffered later from electrical problems when Frenchman Romain Dumas was behind the wheel.
In the second half of the race, it was a Toyota benefit. The #8 Toyota charged to the front and was never headed, losing the lead only during cycling through pit stops. Having an engine able to produce a whopping one thousand horsepower on those long straights at Spa certainly helped. So did exemplary pit work, and solid strategy. Toyota are hitting their straps at the right time.
An important difference was the Porsche and Toyota prototypes running Le Mans-type low downforce packages, while the two full-season Audi challengers did not, opting for the opposite setup. They were markedly slower – you could see it on TV and you could see it at the track – as a result.
Worryingly for Dr Wolfgang Ulrich’s squad, the third Audi entry at Spa, run ahead of a challenge at Le Mans, did have a low downforce package, yet was significantly slower than the Porsches and Toyotas. The second place Audi, the #1 of Kristensen, Duval and di Grassi wasn’t really in the hunt for top step on the podium.
Toyota’s win was as emphatic as they come. The #7 of Alex Wurz, Stephane Sarrazin and Kazuke Nakajima came home in third, completing a dominant day for the Japanese manufacturer.
It would appear that Audi has work to do before the Le Mans test day scheduled for June 1, though whether there is any sandbagging going on ahead of the double-points Le Mans classic is anyone’s guess. One thing to keep in mind: Audi are consummate professionals with some of the best drivers in the world. They should not be discounted. If the Le Mans test day doesn’t tell a truer story, qualifying for the 24 hour race certainly will.
LMP2 victory went to the #26 G-Drive Racing Morgan-Nissan who cruised across the line, more than a minute ahead of their closest competitors, the Jota Sport Zytek-Nissan squad.
AF Corse’s #51 Ferrari F458 won GTE-Pro by a lap, after a race-long tussle with the #91 Porsche Team Manthey RSR. The GT ranks became a clean sweep for AF Corse when their #61 Ferrari F458 won GTE-Am, leading home a pair of Aston Martins.
We’ve witnessed a fantastic start to the 2014 season. The new regulations have not, as many thought, done anything to dull the racing. We’ve seen two great races to start the new season. The LMP1 prototypes are the most sophisticated and technically-advanced race cars in the world. Crucially, in this day and age, the cars are just as fast as they were last year, but are using anywhere between 25-30% less fuel than a year ago.
There’s something to be said for cooperation and forward thinking, isn’t there? During the off-season, the ACO, the governing body in charge of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and it’s World Endurance Championship partners, the FIA, sat down, put their heads together and came up with a perfect set of regulations for this season.
Clearly, they've hit the nail on the head. Fan attendance at Silverstone and Spa well up on 2013 numbers. According to reports from the track, large numbers of fans were still queuing outside the racetrack in the Ardennes on Saturday morning, trying to buy tickets and get inside as the cars were rolling onto the track.
The combined attention brought to the second year of the World Endurance Championship by the twin arrivals of Mark Webber and Porsche to LMP1 has obviously helped, but fans new to the series – like a large number of Australians, I suspect – are discovering fantastic racing in beautiful cars. And, if that wasn’t enough, the world’s greatest endurance race is next.
See you at Le Mans!
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