The no. 7 Audi crew of Benoit Treluyer, Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler took a thrilling victory in the first round of the World Endurance Championship, as the Six Hours of Silverstone built to a nail-biting crescendo.
After completing a record-breaking 201 laps, the margin of victory was a mere 4.6 seconds as the charging Neel Jani – who shared with Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb – narrowly ran out of laps to deprive Audi of a win which had seemed a near certainty with twenty minutes remaining.
However, a stop-go penalty handed to Fassler for exceeding the track limits at Club while passing a GTE Aston Martin threatened to undo all the team’s good work; in particular a stellar treble stint from Lotterer, which saw him first pass and then pull away from Anthony Davidson’s Toyota and the sole remaining Porsche of Dumas.
But despite also having to stop for a quick splash of fuel to make it to the finish, Fassler still had enough in hand to emerge from his penalty in front of Jani, with reigning World Champions Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima completing the podium to make it three different manufacturers in as many positions.
Although the Toyota finished only 14 seconds behind the winners, the Japanese marque had never looked likely to challenge to outright victory, which from the word go looked likely to come down to a showdown between Porsche and Audi.
Mark Webber led away from pole position and was able to build a comfortable gap over team-mate Dumas in the opening stint, only for a drivetrain failure ninety minutes into the race to put pay to his challenge, before Brendan Hartley and Timo Bernhard could even get behind the wheel.
“It was over pretty quick, I only felt it one lap before,” said a rueful Webber. “But up until then we had a nice lead and it was going well, so it’s a shame for the team. All of us on the no. 17 car had a great build up to the weekend and that was displayed in the start of the race. We have a lot of good potential here, but when you don’t finish obviously there’s no result, so it’s tough.”
Image: Octane Photographic