FIA World Endurance Championship at Silverstone

More than 35,000 spectators at Silverstone witnessed Audi being crowned as the inaugural FIA World Endurance Manufacturer Champions as they finished first and third at the 6 Hours of Silverstone, part of the FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC).

The No 1 Audi R18 E-tron Quattro driven by Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoit Tréluyer , repeated their victory at Le Mans in June with the win at Silverstone.It was a good race and they had to fight hard for the honour as they were pushed all the way to the chequered flag by the Toyota Racing petrol hybrid, TS030 of Alex Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima and Nicolas Lapierre. The No 2 Audi R18 Ultra of Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen came home third after a slow puncture forced the team to make an unscheduled pit-stop earlier in the race.

The No 13 Rebellion Racing Lola-Toyota of Andrea Belicchi and Harold Primat finished “best of the rest” taking the win in the LMP1 Privateer race, but they were chased home by the No 21 Strakka Racing HPD-Honda of Danny Watts, who managed to close the gap to just 0.627 seconds as the two cars crossed the line after 6 hours of racing.

Silverstone based team ADR-Delta made home advantage count to win the LMP2 class, with the No 25 Oreca-Nissan piloted by John Martin, Tor Graves and Jan Charouz taking the win less than 6 seconds ahead of Sebring and Le Mans winners Enzo Potolicchio, Ryan Dalziel and Stephane Sarrazin in the No.44 Starworks Motorsports HPD-Honda. The No.26 Signatech Oreca-Nissan of Pierre Ragues, Nelson Panciatici and Roman Rusinov finished not far behind these two in third place.

In LMGTE the 6 Hours of Silverstone proved to be successful for the Ferraris of the AF Corse team as they took wins in both the Pro and Am classes. The No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia of Gianmaria Bruni and Giancarlo Fisichella won the Pro class in a hard fought race, while the No. 61 AF Corse-Waltrip Ferrari 458 Italia of Piergiuseppe Perrazzini, Marco Cioci and Matt Griffin were victorious in the Am class, finishing ahead of the No. 50 Larbre Competition Corvette and the No.88 Team Felbermayr-Proton Porsche.

The FIA World Endurance Championship now moves on to Brazil and the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo in the 15th September.

Report: Richard Webb
Photography: Richard Leach