WEC: Buemi overwinters as WEC leader
SECOND IN CHINA Sébastien Buemi finished second in Toyota's double victory in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) in Shanghai. His lead in the standings shrinks to five points. The WEC continues in March in the USA. The Shanghai 6-hour race was held in inclement weather conditions. Were the two Toyota teams in the dry [...]
The 6-hour race in Shanghai took place in miserable weather conditions. While the two Toyota teams were only just ahead of the private LMP1 sports cars in the dry practice, the only factory team was able to exploit the all-wheel drive of its hybrid prototypes on wet surfaces.
Conditions on the GP circuit in the Chinese metropolis were unacceptable at times. The race was therefore interrupted twice for safety reasons. The clock continued to run, and so the winning team covered only 616 kilometers (102.1 km/h) instead of around 1000 kilometers as in a normal race.
Bad luck with the timing of a pit stop
As the starting driver, Sébastien Buemi soon managed to overtake the sister car that had started from pole position. However, despite setting the fastest lap times in the field, the driver from the Vaudois had to settle for second place with Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima just behind teammates Conway, Kobayashi and Lopez.
Sébastien Buemi: "The car was quite good to drive even in the heavy rain. It did me good to take the lead. We had the speed to win, but unfortunately were unlucky with the pit stop during a safety car period. In the process, we lost a lot of time to our teammates that we couldn't make up."
Rebellion not on the podium
Third place overall went to the Russian team SMP Racing with Aleshin and Petrov and ex-Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button on a BR1-AER. Rebellion Racing was therefore not the best LMP1 privateer team for the first time. Neel Jani, André Lotterer (D) and Bruno Senna (BR) were beaten by 17 seconds. The second Rebellion R-13 with Mathias Beche (Geneva), Thomas Laurent (F) and Gustavo Menezes (USA) finished two laps down in fourth place.
In the world championship, the lead of Le Mans winners Buemi, Alonso and Nakajima over their teammates melted to five points (102 to 97). The two Rebellion teams follow in third (Beche/73 points) and fourth (Jani/63).
Continuation in spring
The year-long WEC Super Season, as it is called, will continue in Florida on March 15, 2019. On the Friday (!) before the legendary 12 Hours of Sebring, the WEC will hold its own race.
The last two World Championship rounds, which were also the first two this year, will then be the Spa 6 Hours in May and the Le Mans 24 Hours on June 15-16, the weekend before Formula E in Bern.
