With apologies for the lateness of this article, Jet lag hit the DSC Editor hard after a gruelling couple of weeks in the USA.
LMP1
The #2 crew of Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer took their second win of the season to close the gap to the Championship leading #8 Toyota crew to 11 points.
That makes eight overall FIA WEC race wins for the Audi trio, and a total of 15 podium finishes in the WEC’s two and a half year story so far!
Audi though take the lead in the Manufacturers Championship by 18 points.
The #1 crew scored the 18th podium finish for Tom Kristensen in the FIA WEC, a new record.
The #8 Toyota crew retain the Drivers Championship lead and preserve their 2014 record of not having finished off the podium this year.
Nicolas Lapierre scored his tenth podium for Toyota,.
All three factory marques led the race in Austin.
Mike Conway’s debut for the Toyota team means that all three Factory teams have seen at least one driver race in LMP1 for the first time this season (Felipe Albuquerque, Mike Conway, Mark Webber, Brendan Hartley, Marc Lieb). Mike becomes the 26th driver to contest an FIA WEC race for a factory LMP1 team.
The #12 Rebellion Racing squad seal the FIA Endurance Trophy For Private LMP1 Teams with a 100% winning record in the P1 Privateer class.
The Lotus/ CLM team scored their first LMP1-L podium on the debut for their new car.
Lucas Auer and James Rossiter both made their LMP1 debuts at COTA.
It’s also the first WEC podium for an AER engined car.
LMP2
COTA saw KCMG score their first race win in the FIA WEC.
It’s the first race win for the Oreca 03R in the WEC (the #27 SMP Racing car took maximum WEC points at Le Mans but was beaten to 12th in class overall).
The Ligier chassis made it’s first WEC points scoring appearance at COTA and as a result the COTA race was the first in FIA WEC history without a Morgan LMP2 car on the entry.
ESM’s appearance at COTA is the first in a WEC race by an HPD chassis since Le Mans 2013, the Honda engine though appeared in a Ligier chassis at Le Mans this year.
ESM finish on the podium on their WEC debut (but score no Championship points).
Sergey Zlobin and the SMP Racing team extend their points lead in the Drivers and Teams standings to a bumper 27 points!
