Motorsport: Neel Jani achieves the big double
After Marcel Fässler (2012) and Sébastien Buemi (2014), Neel Jani can now also call himself world champion. Despite a disappointing second half of the season, he has managed the big double Le Mans and the World Championship with Porsche. AutoSprintCH congratulates him! The nail-biter lasted until the end of the 2016 World Endurance Championship for Neel Jani. A collision while lapping a GT car [...]
The nail-biter lasted until the end of the 2016 World Endurance Championship for Neel Jani. A collision while lapping a GT car forced him to make a repair stop after 29 laps at the 6 Hours of Bahrain. This threw Romain Dumas, Marc Lieb and him out of the running for victory. After that, it was just a matter of getting the Porsche 919 Hybrid safely to the finish line, which it did with sixth place.
Since the triumph at Le Mans, Porsche's number two trio has not finished higher than fourth in any of the six other races. After the victory inherited from the Audi disqualification at Silverstone and second place at Spa, the double maximum points score at the 24-hour race was decisive. The world championship leaders lived off this cushion until the very end. Neel Jani: "We could have won at least one or two more races without bad luck. But nobody asks about that anymore. Because what counts is the WRC title and victory at Le Mans. It's great to have won both in the year of the strongest participation."
Only Toyota could have thwarted the title win of the soon-to-be 33-year-old from Biel. But both of the Japanese company's cars, which have performed strongly of late, fell short of expectations. Sébastien Buemi finished fourth and has to be content with a single podium finish in 2016 (3rd in Shanghai). On the other hand, the defending champion from Aigle is already back on course for the FIA Formula E title after two victories.
Audi bids farewell to the series with one-two victory
Audi celebrated a superior one-two victory in its farewell race. As the final driver, Marcel Fässler was able to fully exploit the power of the high-torque LMP1 diesel hybrid once again and celebrated second place together with André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer. With their second victory of the season after Spa, their teammates Lucas die Grassi, Loïc Duval and Oliver Jarvis moved up to second place in the manufacturers' standings like Audi, Marcel Fässler himself in fifth place in the drivers' championship. As his contract still has two years to run, he will probably contest GT3 races for Audi and the endurance classics with Corvette Racing in the future.
www.fiawec.com
Photos: Archive
