Rounding up some points of interest for this the very first FIA WEC race at the Circuit of the Americas:
Audi make it five out of five this year and this was Ingolstadt’s 100th sportscar race win since the R8R won at Sebring back in 2000; but this time Toyota ran them close.
Tom Kristensen meanwhile featured on the driving squad of that first win, also in the USA of course, as well as today’s century!
The pendulum swings back further in favour of the #2 crew – Allan McNish, Loic Duval and Tom Kristensen. They now lead the Drivers Championship by 33 points from the #1 crew with just three races to go.
Toyota get another podium finish for the #8 crew, that helps to delay what looks like an inevitable Manufacturers Championship for Audi just a little longer!
It all came down in the end to Toyota’s ability to double stint their tyres and go longer on fuel keeping them in the hunt and Audi’s ability to do it just once making the final and crucial difference.
Rebellion miss out on a podium despite an entirely trouble-free run and a far from perfect run from the third placed Audi!
The #1 Audi had a troubled run and Marcel Fassler had his first ever airborne moment in a sportscar:
“The first time I have ever seen blue sky through the windscreen and it was very scary! In this sort of racing there is a lot of traffic, a lot of overtaking and that is too big a price to pay for a small error, we could easily have written off the car, or worse!”
WIth a Full Course Yellow-free ALMS race yesterday and just one brief period under the Safety Car today we’ve had around 8.5 hours of race running.
In LMP2 it was a second, consecutive, dominant performance from the #26 G-Drive Oreca Nissan crew of Mike Conway, John Martin and Roman Rusinov, they came home a full lap ahead of the title contending Pecom Oreca Nissan, the Dunlop-shod #26 beating Michelin’s #49.
John Martin: “It was very tough, we managed to double stint the tyres but Oak did too (in fact Brundle triple stinted his Dunlops) and if they hadn’t hit each other I think it would have been very close. As it turned out though Roman did a fantastic job and gave Mike a good car to bring home.”
Completing the podium though was the #32 Lotus Praga, a first podium finish for the Lotus T128 and almost trebling the team’s 2013 points tally in one fell swoop!
A recovery drive from the #35 Morgan Nissan netted the team enough points to retain a slim 3 point Championship lead over Pecom with the sister #24 car falling back despite an epic effort from Alex Brundle, one of THE drives of the race to take and retain the lead on three stint old Dunlops.
GTE Pro was a fantastic battle that ebbed and flowed throughout with drama for the Porsche team and for Aston Martin too with a pitlane fire putting the #91 car down the order and clattered kerbs accounting for the #97 and #98 Vantages.
That left four relatively undelayed cars to fight it out and it was the #99 Aston Martin of Bruno Senna and Fred Makowiecki that prevailed despite a delaminated tyre for Senna that was the end result of an early near spin in avoidance of someone else’s incident.
“It’s great to finally get this win together after the recent disappointments,” said Mako post race, the current #99 crew are still way back in the points standings but as today proved, anything can, and probably will, happen!
AF Corse came home in second and third places with the Championship leading #51 crew of Gimmi Bruni and Giancarlo Fisichella coming away from COTA with a 3 point lead in the Drivers Championship over the fourth placed #92 Porsche pairing of Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz.
Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke fall back to third courtesy of one of those clattered kerbs and the subsequent damage to the #97 car. The late race controversy here though was that the AMR team had made a repair to the damaged suspension that passed inspection by the AMR team management and the car’s designer, the team insistent that it was safe to return to the track and complete the additional 12 or 13 laps it required to complete a points scoring minimum distance.
The ACO’s Chief Scrutineer Daniel Perdrix though was insistent that the repair was not safe and, despite the efforts, and pretty strenuous efforts they were too, to persuade him otherwise, the parting comment to David Richards was that he would be telling the Race Director that he did not wish the car to race on.
Mr Perdrix’s opinion prevailed and the #97 car sat for the remainder of the race on the pit apron with the phrase “Whatever happened to the Spirit of Le Mans?” written on the front wing.
GTE AM was another fast and furious affair that came down to a close battle at the end between the Aston Martin pair, the #96 car had been a little off colour all day with braking and downshift problems, but problems for others and good steady running from Jamie Campbell Walter and Stuart Hall saw them drag up behind the #95 car which had once held a substantial lead courtesy in no small part to some excellent lappery from Nicki Thiim.
It came down to final stint tussle between JCW and Kristian Poulsen and the Scot got the call that the pair were to race for the win, the Championship points important to the factory and the #96 boys, the raw emotion important to the Danes.
“It wasn’t easy,” said Jamie later, “I’d been told to race but Kristian had a better car, faster in a straight line and better and more stable under braking, I knew I’d have to pressure him but of course I didn’t want to do anything too risky.“
The wily fox’s box of racing trick proved enough to apply the necessary pressure – #96 took the win to take the lead in the Championship, now 4 point clear of the third placed car here the #IMSA Performance Porsche crew of Raymond Narac and Jean Karl Vernay.
All in all this was a very different experience, a great new track and facility, but in need of much, much better promotion.
A race of this quality should help but for gawds sake lose the orange ‘pyramids‘ surely one of the most dangerous ‘innovations‘ to ‘grace‘ a track for many years!
One other thing to add – We had some major common sense emerging on the timing and content of 2014 calendars but the other old GG bugbear of ludicrous crowd figures is still here – 33,951 the ‘weekend total’.
Sorry COTA but even if you are counting everyone that passed the gate three times over that simply isn’t credible – There was next to nobody here on Friday due to the dreadful weather, a fair but not huge crowd on Saturday for the ALMS race and WEC qualifying, and frankly a poor crowd for the WEC race today.
My tip is to look hard at ticket pricing, look harder still at marketing and embrace an opportunity to build this fantastic venue as a new home for an increasingly popular part of the sport. A World Championship’s multi year commitment needs to be matched by the effort to build a following here.
Thanks to the ever hard working DSC team here, Snappers David Lord, Doris Downes, Skippy Hall, King of Pfaff Lefebure and Martin Spetz and literary artistes Janos Wimpffen, Mark Howson and James ‘Birthday boy’ Goodwin.
It’s been a hell of a weekend!
GG
