What a topsy turvy race that was, with titles swapping around, particularly in the GTE classes, throughout the race.
Let’s start this one from GTE AM for a change.
FINALLY! the all Danish Aston Martin crew did it, after retiring from the lead of no fewer than three 2013 WEC races they get their first win of the year – Congratulations to all concerned after what has been a very testing year on every possible front – Well done Christoffer Nygaard and Kristian Poulsen for staying with the programme and well done to Nicki Thiim who has had a simply incredible year of highs and lows, wins at the Nurburgring 24 Hours and in Porsche Supercup and now in a World championship race too.
8 Star’s refreshingly orange Ferrari brings home a second place to secure their teams title and Matt Griffin, Francois Perrodo and the evergreen Manu Collard complete the podium.
For the season though it’s the other Aston Martin crew, Jamie Campbell Walter and Stuart Hall that takes the Drivers title, Roald Goethe bringing the car home fault free and allowing the two Brits to attack.
The teams title falls to Enzo Potolicchio’s 8Star Motorsport team, the Venuzuelan will be very disappointed not to take the driver’s title too but he’ll have silverware of real worth to content himself with after a year that brought great racing and some real controversy, Enzo is still seething about what he felt were unfair tactics employed around driver rankings – that debate though was had, dealt with and we move on.
In GTE Pro there was something for almost everyone on the grid, all three manufacturers took race wins, Porsche won Le Mans, Aston showed pace, flair and race winning form just about everywhere but stumbled when it counted – Heartbreak in Bahrain with both factory cars retiring with wholly unexpected engine woes followed the lowest of lows at Le Mans.
But it is Ferrari, AF Corse and Gimmi Bruni that retain the GTE Teams and Manufacturers titles and take the first GTE Pro Drivers Championship respectively – Now then our Italian friends, come back and defend it!
LMP2 was dominated into and through the mid-season by a well prepared and financed Oak Racing team, early season issues for Delta ADR and G-Drive, and some stumbles from Pecom Racing, left everyone with a mountain to climb this weekend. The #35 team drove the conservative race that was required and kept it on the island to confirm a World Championship and Le Mans double.
The #24 crew chased very, very hard all season but their unlucky days were just a little less lucky than their team-mates.
The race win though went to the team that were the class of the field for the second half of the season, G-Drive Racing with Delta ADR took their Oreca Nissan to soaring heights with hugely impressive performances from Mike Conway, John Martin and Roman Rusinov. They were one bad result away from a real shot at the title eventually but that’s racing. They did though become the only crew this season, and only the second ever, to score an overall podium in a WEC race with an LMP2 machine. They also score Nissan’s first WEC overall podium finish! It’s the first too for Oreca.
The late charge from the #24 here though wrested second place in the Championship back from the #26 crew.
Congratulations too to Greaves Motorsport for a podium finish too for the Zytek Nissan with Jon Lancaster and Wolfgang Reip both making their LMP race debuts.
Nissan engines utterly dominated proceedings both here and across the season and Dunlop tyres prevailed against Pecom’s at times sizable Michelin challenge.
And so to LMP1
Almost everyone was delighted to welcome Toyota’s first race win of the season and the first for the #8 crew since the start of the TS030 programme, Sebastien Buemi scoring his first ever sportscar win alongside Ant Davidson and Stephane Sarrazin.
The #1 Audi came home in second place on a day of hugely uncommon LMP1 attrition with Toyota losing a car to an until now unique engine failure for the TS030 and the #2 Audi crew sealing their world title, rather oddly, with drivetrain failure seeing the car parked before the halfway point.
Let’s remember too the efforts of the Rebellion Racing team, the last race for the Lola Toyota, and, more particularly the Lola LMP1 car ended with drama. Too early, but the team will gather themselves for the even greater challenge to come in 2014.
For now though let’s congratulate Audi and the #2 crew of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Loic Duval for a season that brought the manufacturer, and all three drivers both the Le Mans and World Championship crowns.
We’re running for a 2am flight out of Bahrain so there will be a pause here before further reflections on a really impressive second season of FIA WEC racing.
Thanks to all involved, Drivers, Teams, sponsors, Championship and circuit staff, those who have helped our logistics efforts, in particular Richard and Andy at Travel Destinations, and to Stefan Regan at Cambridge Business Travel, our media colleagues, most notably the truly world class team at Radio Le Mans, and most particularly to all the fans and in particular to you our loyal and growing numbers of readers.
Finally, it would be remiss not to to thank our sponsors for this season Nissan, without Darren Cox, Sylvia Mink and Lindsay Morle and their colleague’s support we simply could not have done this in the manner which we (and we believe you!) believe it deserves.
Here’s to 2014 – Porsche LMP1, ZEOD RC and much, much more to come.
