After six hours of racing around England’s Silverstone circuit, Audi’s #1 R18 e-tron quattro hybrid finished first in the fourth round of the World Endurance Championship, as expected.
What was less expected was the battle that Toyota put up to take second ahead of the second Audi.
Toyota’s #7 TS0303 Hybrid, in only its second race, beat the #2 Audi R18 Ultra despite having horrendous fuel mileage. The Audis were running 28-laps stints, while the Toyota could only manage 23, but even with an extra pit stop the Toyota came within a minutes of winning the race.
Audi has dominated endurance racing in the 21st century, wining al but two Le Mans 24s; no one expects anything but success from the German giant. For Toyota, making a low-budget exploratory effort prior to entering the series seriously in 2013, to run even with Audi, shows the immense potential of the Japanese team.
Audi ran a flawless race. Its cars performed to plan, its drivers and crews made no errors. Toyota, in its second race, did the same. Only insufficient engine development kept the team from tasting victory.
Audi locked up the manufacturer’s World Championship—a hollow victory, as the German team had no real competition. After Peugeot pulled out suddenly just before the season started, ACO/FIA pleaded with Toyota to enter as a manufacturer, something the Japanese factory hadn’t planned to do until 2013.
Toyota agreed to enter more races, but it was too late to attend Sebring and a testing accident kept the team out of Spa, so Audi, with three cars at the season opener and two Spa, earned huge points with no competition. Toyota started its season at the Le Mans 24, which is akin to learning to swim by jumping into a pack of sharks in the middle of the ocean during a typhoon.
Audi has worked for its wins this season; the team has not made some of the pit, strategy, and driving errors which cost it wins in the past several seasons. Still it is impossible to know what might have happened if Toyota had been able to put pressure on the Audis.
The Audi team can celebrate; but while they enjoy their triumph, they will know that next year, they will face a worthy foe.
Ferrari nearly swept the podium in GTE-Pro. The Ferraris of AF Corse and JMW led the #97 Aston Martin until the final lap, when Aston driver Stefan Mücke bashed his way around the AF Corse #71 Ferrari of Andrea Bertolini, snatching the last step of the podium, behind the #512 AF Corse Ferrari and the #66 JMW Ferrari.
The Ferraris got much better fuel mileage—six laps a stint—but the final yellow flag erased some of that benefit, and Mücke was blindingly fast in the final half hour.
P2 promised to be tight based on qualifying times, where ten cars were within a second. The expected battles didn’t develop during the race. ADR-Delta Oreca-Nissan finished 5.6 seconds ahead of the Starworks HPD ARX03b.
AF Corse Waltrip won GTE-Am as well with its #61 Ferrari.
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