WEC 6 hrs of Spa Francorchamps 2018
In a formation finish Fernando Alonso crossed the line ahead of his rival Mike Conway. This was incredible, because the No.7 Toyota TS050 HYBRID starting from the pit lane, a lap behind the entire field. It was the first win for Alonso at his WEC debut with the No.8 Toyota Gazoo Racing car, and his first victory at Spa for almost 18 years. The new non-hybrid Rebellion R13-Gibson of André Lotterer, Neel Jani and Bruno Senna finished third, but the car was later disqualified after the post-race measurement of the skid block. The sister Rebellion Racing entry of Thomas Laurent, Gustavo Menezes and Mathias Beche took third place instead.
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The ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan (wich where in flames at the pit lane in the early stages of the race) shared by Tom Dillmann, Oliver Webb and Dominik Kraihamer took a distant fourth position, a further three laps back on the Rebellion pair, while the #11 SMP car of Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov was last of the LMP1 finishers in sixth. The two Toyotas circulated around a minute apart until a late safety car period was caused by a big crash for Matevos Isaakyan in the #17 SMP Racing BR1-AER at the top of Eau Rouge at the five-hour mark. That bunched up the pack, not long after Alonso had taken over from Nakajima for a final double stint, and Mike Conway took the restart in the #7 car hot on the Spaniard’s heels. However, despite closing to within a second of the two-time Formula 1 champion at one stage, Conway never attempted a pass, and duly crossed the line 1.4 seconds behind the victorious Alonso.
G-Drive triumphed with back-to-back Spa win!
Jean-Eric Vergne, Roman Rusinov and Andrea Pizzitola triumphed with G-Drive Racing in the LMP2 class after they took control of the race in the second hour. Maximum points where going to the No.38 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA 07-Gibson of Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry and Stéphane Richelmi as G-Drive Racing is not a full-season entrant. The 2016 champions of Signatech Alpine Matmut took one point at friday with their pole position, and second position points from the race. Nevertheless Jean-Eric Vergne of G-Drive said “it was an amazing win. Obviously we don’t win in endurance without two good drivers and a good team, so big thanks to them. I think I did five stints in total”. Pastor Maldonado finished sixth on his WEC debut in the DragonSpeed Oreca he shared with Nathanael Berthon and Roberto Gonzalez after being delayed by a brief stoppage on track and a drive-through penalty for pitlane speeding. Giedo van der Garde enjoyed a spell out front early on in the race in the #29 Racing Team Nederland Dallara before his charge was halted by an alternator problem.
Ford celebrates TOTAL 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps LMGTE Pro win
After a race-long battle with the No.91 Porsche 911 RSR of Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz Ford claimed their first WEC victory with Olivier Pla, Stefan Mücke and Billy Johnson. An breathtaking overtake at the exit of Raidillon with just 45 minutes to go secured their win. The No.91 Porsche missed the podium as well, after they’ve got passed by their sister car and later Davide Rigon swept through to take the final podium position in the No.71 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo. A spectacular crash by Harry Tincknell was one of the reasons the safety car had to come out for the second time of 3 periods total. The British driver left his Ford GT uninjured. LMP1 driver Matevos Isaakyan had a similarly high-speed crash at the top of Eau Rouge that eliminated SMP Racing’s lead challenger, the #17 BR Engineering BR1-AER, with around an hour left on the clock. BMW made a promising debut at Spa as Antonio Felix da Costa and Tom Blomqvist finished in fifth position to claim useful championship points with the new BMW Team MTEK M8 GTE. The GTE Am class was won by the #98 Aston Martin Vantage after Pedro Lamy fended off the #90 TF Sport Aston of Euan Hankey in a nailbiting finish. A 35-second advantage for the works car was reduced to five by the final safety car, after which Hankey closed in and put Lamy under big pressure in the closing minutes. The pair made contact at the Bus Stop chicane as they duked it out for the win, but Lamy held on to the win by just 0.221s at the finish in the car he shares with Mathias Lauda and Paul Dalla Lana.
