The World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Shanghai was a huge victory for Audi and a huge disappointment for Toyota.
Audi, which had already won every race in 2013 (with the exception of Fuji, which was rained out) came back in the final half-hour to take the win, and Toyota, which had led for the first five-and-a-half hours, finally had to settle for second.
Both two-car teams had to overcome punctures which altered their strategies. In the end, Audi had the edge because its puncture came at a more opportune time, because of team cooperation, and also because of four amazing stints from driver Benoît Tréluyer.
“That was a brilliant victory because it was a really hard-fought one,” said Audi’s motorsport director Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. “The race was thrilling all the way to the end and decided only in the last half hour. The team performance was particularly nice because car number 2 helped out car number 1 with tire sets. Consequently, we delivered a great result for the Audi brand and showed how harmoniously our team functions.
“In the winning team, Benoît Tréluyer had a very important part. The track suits him particularly well.”
Tréluyer’s teammates also gave him credit for the win.
“A fantastic day for Audi with our victory,” said André Lotterer, one of Tréluyer’s co-drivers. “We had Super-Ben in our car today. Originally, he only wanted to drive two stints. But because he was extremely fast he wound up driving four.
“In the beginning, we lost a bit of ground and had to change a flat tire. But we managed to turn the situation around with a better strategy and better tires. We subsequently caught up with Toyota, who had a puncture too. This made the race extremely thrilling. And our team-mates have won the World Championship title. A great day!”
Toyota should take away the thought that even though they lost the race in the last half hour, they did manage to lead the entire rest of the race. It was Toyota’s strongest showing by far in the 2013 season, and should give the teams hope for the final race in Bahrain on Nov. 30.
And of course, Audi takes away all the hardware: the race win the driver’s World Championship, and the knowledge that it is still the dominant force in sports car endurance racing.
Good Reason for High Hopes
After seven events and no real race wins, at Saturday’s World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Shanghai Toyota finally seemed ready and able to win a race.
True, Toyota had been awarded victory at the Fuji Six Hours, but they didn’t earn it; the race was stifled by a typhoon and the green flag never waved. Toyota was awarded the win on the strength of its qualifying effort.
At Shanghai, Toyota finally had what it had lacked all season long: speed. For the first time the LMP1 TS030 Hybrids were regularly and notably faster than Audi’s R18 e-tron quattros.
Better still Toyota had brought a pair of TS030s to China, doubling the Japanese team’s chances.
To add to Toyota’s advantage, the 3.4-mile Shanghai International Circuit suited Toyota’s rear-drive hybrid system and hampered the Audis with their all-wheel-drive. WEC rules prevent cars from using AWD below speeds of 70 mph, and five corners of the tracks 16—the 1–2–3 complex, Six, Nine, Eleven, and Fourteen— slowed the cars below that limit. Toyota would have a 300-horsepower advantage accelerating out of those corners.
It turned out that the temperature on race day also helped. Friday’s practice and qualifying sessions had been cool, but race day was much warmer. This made the rack slippery, which might seem to favor four-wheel-drive, but in fact because of the 70-mph rule, it did the opposite—Audi would understeer exiting the slow corners and then get a rush of power to the front wheels halfway out, increasing the understeer.
True, Toyota had to deal with 800 horsepower tearing up the rear tires, but that was something a deriver could more easily control.
From the green flag Toyota showed its strength. Nicolas Lapierre in the #7 car leapt away from the field and after twelve laps had opened a gap of 13 seconds over Anthony Davidson in the #8 and was lapping in the 1:50s, while André Lotterer in the #1 Audi was a further three seconds back and Allan McNish in the #2 Audi eleven seconds behind his team mate. Both Audis were half a second slower than Lapierre.
To make matters even worse for Audi, their engineers had guessed wrong on the tire compound for the start of the race. After 20 laps all these advantages added up to a 30-second lead for Lapierre
Toyota brought the #8 into the pits first, after only 24 laps—somewhat surprising since the Toyotas could go at least 26 laps on a tank of fuel, but the car’s tires, which had already run 11 laps of qualifying. The Audis and then Lapierre pitted on lap 25; Toyota comfortably kept the lead.
Ten minutes after the leaders pitted, the #32 P2 Lotus of Thomas Holzer unwisely cut in front of the Nic Jonsson in the #57 GTE-Am Krohn racing Ferrari. Johnsson didn’t have the braking capacity of the Lotus and slammed Holzer from behind, scattering sharp shards of carbon fiber. One shard found its way into the left front tire of André Lotterer; the #1 Audi driver had to pit again.
Faced with this predicament, Audi engineer Leena Gade decided to gamble. She sent Lotterer back out with four fresh tires of a different compound. Lottere was quicker on the new rubber, but still couldn’t match the Toyotas.
After an hour of racing, Davidson led Lapierre by two seconds, with McNish and Lotterer 30 and 40 seconds back.
Gade tried a quick short-fill fuel stop without changing tires to gain some track position. This got Lotterer ahead of McNish when the Scot driver next pitted, but didn’t close the gap to the Toyotas. Gade called Lotterer in again after only 13 laps for another set of tires. Lotterer handed off to Benoît Tréluyer, now fourth again, and Tréluyer started flying, setting several fastest laps
Meanwhile the Toyotas were running like … well, like Audis—no problems, solid laps, maintaining their lead. There was a bit of worry when Sebastien Buemni in the leading #8 car was told his rear brakes were overheating—Toyota had had trouble with its hybrid system in the past, and it manifested first through the rear brakes overheating as the system, which scavenges energy by assisting with braking, stopped working. Toyota assured everyone that the problem was not in the hybrid unit, and after Buemi adjusted his brake bias, all seemed well.
Three minutes before the three-hour mark, Buemi picked up a puncture, and had to pit, but this was no huge issue—the car was 20 laps into a projected 26-lap stint, so Toyota just gave him a bit less fuel, fresh rubber and sent him out again. This gave the overall lead to Stephane Sarrazin in the #7.
By halfway, Toyota looked unbeatable; after 97 laps of racing the two Audis were a lap down, more than two minutes behind. True, Tréluyer was the quickest car on the course but who knew what Toyota might be capable of, if they needed to push harder? The race win seemed assured.
After four hours, Tréluyer had unlapped himself and was in third, but still 42 seconds back. The two Toyotas were trading the lead at pit stops and running soundly.
The Unraveling Begins
Fifteen minutes after the four-hour mark, the first bit of thread worked itself loose from the sound and solid race Toyota was trying to sew up. Nicolas Lapierre in the #7 car got a puncture only a few laps after his scheduled pit stop. This let the #8 back onto the lead while the #7 dropped to third, behind Tréluyer who was driving a demon double-stint.
Tréluyer briefly took the lead on lap 144 after the #8 pitted. In terms of the race it didn’t mean much—Lapierre retook the lead on the next lap—but symbolically it was huge: Toyota’s unbreakable train was not only split, it was momentarily eclipsed. Suddenly Audi looked like a contender.
Fifteen minutes later Toyota’s sun came crashing out of the sky. Only 90 minutes from victory Anthony Davidson’s #8 Toyota ran off the track. Davidson radioed in, “Something’s wrong with the car. There’s something—the suspensions broken. Something’s broken on the car.”
For no apparent reason the #8 Toyota’s right front upper wishbone had failed, also bending the lower wishbone. Engineers might have been able to replace the parts, but there was no way to check for structural damage to the tub, and there was no safe way to send the car back out with a possibly damaged tub. Half the Toyota attack was eliminated in an instant.
“It has been a heartbreaking day for us,” Davidson said in a press statement. “It’s rare that you have a race in the bag from so early on but we had it completely under control after the puncture of car #7.
“I was just conserving the car then braking into Turn Six, something broke on the suspension. I made it back to the pits but unfortunately it was irreparable. It is massively disappointing. We would have won this race fair and square. Sometimes motorsport bites you hard and it obviously wasn’t meant to be today.”
Davidson’s retirement gave the race lead briefly back to Audi, as Marcel Fässler in the #1 sailed by, only to give the lead back to the #7 when the Audi pitted five minutes later. But now the magic was gone—Toyota no longer looked invincible, they team looked vulnerable, despite still being thirty seconds ahead. The inexorable Audi machine was grinding its way forward, and everything in its path was going to be consumed.
The Endgame
Fifty-four minutes from the finish, the leading #7 Toyota came into the pits. Nicolas Lapierre got out and Alexander Wurz got in. Lapierre had set the fastest Toyota race lap at 1:49.383; possibly Toyota should have saved him for the finish, but with an hour to go he had driven three stints, and was due for a rest. For some reason Toyota didn’t supply a third driver for the #7—it was three hours apiece for Lapierre and Wurz.
This matched Wurz against first Marcel Fässler and then Benoît Tréluyer in the #1 Audi; Tréluyer had set a string of fast laps, including one at 1:49.066. Toyota could not afford to give up three-tenths per lap with 25 laps or more left to run.
To make matters worse, Audi’s cars were responding well to the cooler evening temperatures. As the sun sank and the track rubbered in, Audi found the grip it had been lacking. Toyota didn’t improve.
There was another wrinkle to Toyota’s strategy. The puncture on lap 138 had skewed the #7’s fuel strategy—the car would either have to run slow to try to conserve fuel, or make another stop for a “splash and dash” to reach the end of the race.
Obviously Toyota could not afford to slow down, with Tréluyer flying, so the only hope was to try to build up enough of a lead to be able to pit and rejoin without falling back.
The puncture had caused another problem—Toyota was limited in its tire choices after having gotten only 13 minutes out of one set. Wurz was forced to use the wrong tires for the final 54 minutes, which obviously compromised his grip. Even worse, he would have to run on full tanks, then refill, abusing the tires even more.
This killed any advantage Toyota might have gotten form being able to run a lap or two longer than the Audis. Had the puncture come just before a pit stop instead of just after, it wouldn’t have mattered, but as things worked out, Toyota lost the time and a set of tires and its mileage advantage all at the same time.
Perhaps the #7 crew could have borrowed a set of harder tires form the #8 car; perhaps the #8 didn’t have an extra set, or perhaps no one thought of it. In any case, Wurz went out on softs, and they didn’t last.
The #1 Audi, back on its normal pit strategy, had a 48-second advantage with 43 minutes to go, but was due for a stop. That stop came on lap 169, with 37 minutes left. Tréluyer, the fastest Audi driver, took over as Wurz took the lead.
Here Toyota made a brilliant gamble. Rather than leaving Wurz out to try to build a lead, Toyota called him in on lap 171, loaded him up with just enough fuel to finish, and sent him out less than a second ahead of the #1 Audi.
Toyota both took and avoided some risks here. The team avoided the risk of building up a big lead and losing it to a late-race caution period; they ran the risk that the #7 Toyota, with tires eight laps older and again on full tanks, would not be able to hold off the Audi.
It couldn’t. Wurz rejoined less than a second ahead of Tréluyer, but the Audi closed quickly. Wurz was giving it everything; the Toyota’s tail was wagging back and forth as Wurz powered out of corners, trying to find both traction but needing to put the power down early to keep his lead.
The pair were nearly nose-to-tail when they came upon the #45 P2 Oak Racing Morgan-Nissan in Turn Three. The slower Oak racing car tried to stay out of the way, but Wurz hesitated, not sure which side to pass on. Tréluyer didn’t hesitate at all, and with all-wheel hybrid power and good traction from fresher tires, spurted past the Toyota and into the lead.
From then on it looked like Toyota just collapsed. The Audi had a two-second lead a lap later, and a thirteen-second lead eight laps after that. The Toyota’s tires were cooked; Wurz couldn’t get within two seconds of Tréluyer’s lap times. The #1 Audi was fifteen seconds ahead when it took the checkered flag.
“The race was disappointing for us, Wurz said later. “We had the wrong compound of tires in the last stint due to the puncture, which forced us to use a set more than originally planned, so I knew it was going to be really tough.
“I was hoping the track temperature would drop much faster than it did. I knew it would be a very tough run to the flag and I couldn’t keep the #1 Audi behind me. That’s racing.
“We are having a strong end to the season performance-wise so big thanks to the team, who keep on pushing. We have one more race to show we can win again.”
Nicolas Lapierre also tired to remain upbeat. “At the beginning we thought we were in a great position because we had a nice gap and we knew on the fuel strategy that we were looking good. Then we had the puncture which happened at the beginning of the lap so it cost quite a lot of time to bring the car back,” he said.
“In the end it’s racing. Probably this was our strongest race weekend so far in terms of performance but we didn’t get the win. We still have Bahrain to get it.”
World Driver Championship to Audi
The #2 Audi cruised home a lap down, but drivers Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen, and Loïc Duval didn’t feel like losers. The #2 car had cruised around conservatively all day (what a strain that must have been for Allan McNish) because the three knew that if they finished well, they would lock up the WEC World Championship for Drivers. Audi had long since sealed up the manufacturer’s Championship, but Kristensen and McNish, with so many Le Mans wins between them, with wins in fact in every major sports car endurance race on the planet, had never won a World Championship.
McNish and Kristensen, and newcomer Duval, kept their eyes on the bigger prize. They let their teammates fight for the race win, and scored one of the few sports car honors which might really mean something to them.
With Porsche entering the WEC next season and Toyota coming back with a pair of new cars, Shanghai was the best chance Kristensen and McNish would probably ever have to win a world title; they didn’t waste it.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment since 1985,” McNish explained in a press release. “Even in karting, I battled for the World Champion’s title. In Formula 1, I didn’t have a real chance. Now, in my third motorsport discipline, it’s worked out.
“I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together this year. Things were going really well. For me, the race at Austin was a very important element on the way to today’s success. Now I’ve got a feeling of special warmth in my body and of special wetness on my back, after Alex Wurz drenched me in champagne ...”
Duval fully understood the import of his success. “I’ve only driven a full season for Audi alongside Tom and Allan this year,” he said. “This was combined with a certain pressure as well as a nice hope. After all, I’m driving in the best team of the world.
“We’ve always given our best and have won the World Champion’s title for it today. That’s an overwhelming feeling in this outstanding year in which we’ve also won Le Mans together. More than this isn’t possible.”
One Last Chance for Toyota
The WEC Six Hours of Bahrain will be Toyota’s last chance to get a win on track in the 2013 season. If Toyota can keep its car working as well on that hot dusty track as it did on the hot, slippery Shanghai circuit in the early hours, the team has a chance. Bahrain runs into the night, but the temperatures don’t usually drop significantly. On the other hand, Audi isn’t likely to miss the tire call next time, after seeing what happened in the early hours at Shanghai.
The status of the #8 Toyota is also unknown. If the car’s tub is damaged, would Toyota spend the time and money to rebuild it, knowing the car will be retired after Bahrain anyway?
Toyota ran 2013 on a limited budget, focusing most of its efforts on 2014 when it will introduce a new car to meet the new regulations. Quite possibly the only reason it brought two cars to Shanghai is that it had extra cash left over after Fuji was rained out—and possibly because the management wanted to get at least one win out of the season.
Whether Toyota still fight hard for that elusive win even if it means a major rebuild of the #8, or if the #8 even needs a rebuild, won’t be known for at least a few days. What is certain is that whichever car or cars and rivers the team sends to Bahrain, the drivers and crews will be very motivated to make up for the disappointment of Shanghai.
The FIA-WEC Six Hours of Bahrain weekend starts Thursday, Nov. 28 with practice, followed by practice and qualifying on Friday. The race takes the green flag at 3 p.m. local time (9 a.m. Eastern) on Saturday, Nov. 30.
Tickets can be ordered online through the FIA/WEC website.
