Spa: Buemi wins with Alonso, Jani loses P3
TOYOTA DOUBLE VICTORY The first joint race with GP star Fernando Alonso ended with a start/finish victory for Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima in Belgium. Neel Jani, who recently became a father, had to relinquish his third place overall with Rebellion. The first race of the multi-year super season of the World Endurance Championship in Belgium attracted more than 60,000 spectators. This was partly due to [...]
The first race of the multi-year super season of the World Endurance Championship in Belgium attracted more than 60,000 spectators. This was partly due to the wonderful spring weather and probably also a little to the newcomer Fernando Alonso. Despite years of failure with McLaren, his appeal has not suffered greatly.
When the charismatic Spaniard celebrated his first of two world championship titles in Formula 1 in 2005, Sébastien Buemi was still driving in Formula BMW. Their paths later crossed in Formula 1, but they only really got to know and appreciate each other in the last few weeks during Toyota Hybrid Racing's preparations for the 2018/19 World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Toyota wanted Alonso to win
With Kazuki Nakajima as the third driver, who set the fastest lap of the entire weekend in qualifying, the Toyota TS050 Hybrid with starting number #8 was in the lead from start to finish. The Rebellion R13 #3 only appeared in P1 for one lap during the first refueling stop.
The Toyota with Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José Maria Lopez had to start from the pits a lap down due to an administrative infringement. The trio were back in second place before the halfway point.
Thanks to the final safety car phase, the leaders' lead dwindled to almost zero, but the team management ordered a non-attack pact. They did not want to jeopardize the one-two victory - and announcing Alonso as the winner brings much more PR than anything else.
This video summarizes the highlights of the race:
https://www.facebook.com/fiawec/videos/1832547513468361/
Only the 24 Hours of Le Mans really counts for Buemi and Toyota
Sébastien Buemi leads the world championship with the Spaniard and the Japanese driver before heading to Le Mans at the beginning of June (test day on the 3rd, race on the 16th/17th). Like the 6 Hours of Spa, the 24 Hours will be part of the multi-year World Endurance Championship in both 2018 and 2019.
Sébastien Buemi: "A great start to the season, which was important for Kazuki and me in the first race with Fernando. I can't remember the last time there were so many yellow flags in a WEC race, so it was close at the end. But this was basically just the warm-up for Le Mans. We always keep the most important race of the year in the back of our minds."
Neel Jani: First fatherly joy, then podium and finally disqualification
In the absence of other works teams in the premier LMP1 class, Rebellion Racing was the runner-up. The British team, which runs under the Swiss flag, drove the two Oreca-developed Rebellion R13s with naturally aspirated Gibson V8 engines to third and fourth place overall, well ahead of the three other private LMP1 sports cars.
As in 2017, Neel Jani and André Lotterer finished on the podium with Porsche. Together with Bruno Senna, they had the second Rebellion trio of Mathias Beche from Geneva, Gustavo Menezes (USA) and Thomas Laurent (F) relatively well under control thanks to their experience.
But the joy only lasted until the technical inspection, where the stewards criticized an underbody panel on the Rebellion #1 that had been ground down 1.2 mm too much.
Neel Jani: "Our car was a bit crooked and therefore more abraded on one side of the underbody. We were even at a slight disadvantage because we kept hitting the ground. So it wasn't really an infringement or a mistake, but the rule is the rule."
However, the man from Biel did not feel any great anger about it. There were worse things, like Pietro Fittipaldi's training accident. The grandson of the former world champion broke both legs.
On April 27, Neel's American wife Lauren gave birth to son Maverick. And in terms of sport, he is basically only interested in Le Mans, where Rebellion can look good.
Neel Jani: "Before this race, we only tested with one car for four days and never did more than twenty laps in a row. From that point of view, the two new cars ran surprisingly well, although there are still one or two details to improve. But we can never do better than third anyway."
Victory for Ford in the GT class
In the more competitive GT class, the Ford GT of Mücke/Pla/Johnson won by just 14 seconds ahead of the Porsche 911 RSR of Christensen/Estre.
Thomas Flohr, the only Swiss WEC driver alongside Buemi, Jani and Beche, only finished eighth in the GT-Am class with Giancarlo Fisichella and Francesco Castellacci. So having a GP winner as a team-mate is no guarantee of success.
