With just six hours of racing left of the 2016 World Endurance Championship season, the time is now for Marc Lieb and his teammates in the #2 Porsche. The trio lead the WEC LMP1 Drivers World Championship by 17 points over the #6 Toyota crew, but are in an unusual situation, suffering from a post-Le Mans slump that has seen them finish no higher than fourth in any of the subsequent races
Without effectively inheriting wins at both Silverstone, after the winning Audi failed post-race scrutineering and Le Mans, when the leading Toyota infamously ground to a halt, the story in the points would be very different.
Nevertheless, consistency has paid off for Lieb, Neel Jani and Romain Dumas, who have often not been the quickest, but finished every race this season with a solid points haul while others have faltered.
With all that in mind though, Lieb is determined to hit form in crunch time and take the title later today, book-ending an incredible season of racing in LMP1 between the three factories.
“I can feel that it’s building up, we are trying to do our best,” Lieb told DSC. “We can’t afford to be conservative because the competition is too high. It’s clear that we shouldn’t take too many risks in traffic, but it will be hard, as Toyota and Audi are strong here in Bahrain. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be tight.”
It would mean a lot to win this, it’s not been an easy season for us
Winning the title with a convincing drive would do a lot to deflect the pressure from the #2’s string of disappointing results since June, but as Lieb says, there’s not been one sole problem which the crew can point a finger at.
“It would mean a lot to win this, it’s not been an easy season for us,” he admitted. “We were lucky in Le Mans to get the win and form then on we struggled in the season. We have struggled on pace the last two races, and had a lot of bad luck as well.
“In this championship you can see that you need to score in every race, you can’t retire form races, it’s so crucial to finish. If you only have six cars when you get to the finish you get good points for finishing at the back. We were really competitive at Le Mans which was great, now we need to wrap the season up with a championship.
There have been many small problems, when you have a bad run, it’s hard to get out of the hole
“There have been many small problems, when you have a bad run, it’s hard to get out of the hole,” he continued. “At the Nüburgring and Mexico we were competitive but made mistakes, in Austin we also had issues with pickup. We lost performance.
“At Fuji and Shanghai we then made bad calls with settings on the car and struggled to drive the cars. There’s been a lot of issues but we have still gotten the points.
“You can never be 100% confident, you never know what’s going to happen. We are just really focused as a trio.”
