Welcome, everyone, to round three of the 2018-2019 FIA World Endurance Championship, “Super Season”. It used to be, 1,000 kilometers) race format for the championship, at another legendary venue. We are at Silverstone Circuit in the English midlands in Northamptonshire, for the 6 Hours of Silverstone. We are about an hour and a half drive north of London, racing in the height of the British summer. It marks a return to action for the FIA WEC after the 24 Hours of Le Mans, two months ago.
Clear, yet blustery weather, greeted the drivers, for qualifying on Saturday before Sunday’s race. The LM GTE Am cars were first out to qualify, and in third place, the legendary #98 Aston Martin V8 Vantage in the hands of Paul Dalla Lana from Canada, ex Formula 1 driver turned sports car ace, Pedro Lamy of Portugal, and son of Formula 1 World Champion and Mercedes team ambassador Niki Lauda, Matthias Lauda. Just ahead was another Aston Martin V8 Vantage, but this one, the #90 machine of TF Sport, for Charlie Eastwood of Ireland, Salih Yoluc of Turkey, and new recruit, Jonny Adam, who formerly drove the factory Aston Martin Vantage. But, in the Am category, Porsche went immediately to the top of the times, with the #56 Project 1 Porsche 911 in the hands of Jorg Bergmeister, team owner Patrick Lindsey, and Egidio Perfetti, the Italian born Swiss driver who now calls Norway, home. In GTE Pro, it was kind of predictable in qualifying. Ford in fourth place, with the two factory Aston Martin Vantage’s next, and at the top, another Ford. So, two Aston Martin’s in a Ford sandwich, if you will.
Ford vs. Aston will be the story in GTE Pro as Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla will share the pole sitting car, the #66 Ford GT. Next up, Prototypes, and a combination of LMP1 and LMP2. In Free Practice, Toyota got some competition from the SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1 Gibson powered cars. More about LMP1 in a moment. In LMP2, Signatech Alpine are coming off of victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the #36 car of Pierre Thiriet, Andre Negrao, and Nicolas Lapierre. This is their lineup for the “super season”, and they were looking for a good showing in qualifying here at Silverstone. Signatech Alpine managed third position in class, but LMP2 was dominated by both cars from one team. That team, Jackie Chan DC Racing, owned in part by action film star, Jackie Chan.
Car #38 was second in the hands of Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry, and Stephane Richelmi. But, it was the all-Malaysian lineup in the team’s sister car, #37, that snatched pole in class, with Jazeman Jaafar, Weiron Tan, and Nabil Jeffri on top. A red flag interrupted LMP1 qualifying briefly. It was Jenson Button taking third place in his #11 SMP Racing BR01 he is sharing with Russian drivers Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin. No surprises at the very top. It’s a Toyota lockout of the front row, but, it is the #7 machine of Mike Conway from England, Japan’s Kamui Kobayashi, and Argentina’s Jose Maria Lopez who earn the pole over their sister car of Switzerland’s Sebastien Buemi, Fernando Alonso, the two-time Formula 1 World Champion, who recently announced he will take a sabbatical from F1 at the end of 2018, and Kazuki Nakajima of Japan.
The #7 squad needs a win, here at Silverstone, if they are going to keep up in the championship with their sister car, and it’s driving team, who is going for the hat trick, three straight wins to open the FIA WEC “super season”. So, qualifying is done and dusted, and now, we move on to the race itself. Stay tuned in the following paragraphs for all the highlights. There’s a big crowd of British fans here, for their home race of the FIA WEC. Adding to the spectacle, a daredevil stuntman on a jet propelled hover board. Rather him, than me. Race car drivers are bold and daring individuals, but let’s just say, the bloke on the jet hover board, he’s just as daring, if not more so. Holy smokes!
At the start of the 6 Hours of Silverstone, the two Toyota’s lead on the front row, and the GT cars are bunching up behind the Prototypes. Six hours on the race clock. Red lights, on, and the rolling start, coming. Red lights, out! Away we go! The third place SMP Racing BR01 didn’t get the power down off the line but seems to have recovered from that momentary stumble. Oh boy! We have a little argy bargy headed into Stowe corner for the first time as one of the Ford GT’s runs wide! Both of the Ford GT’s make contact, and it looks like one of the Rebellion LMP1 cars is also off the road. One of the SMP cars is in this opening corner carambolage as well.
Well, that’s overly dramatic. It wasn’t a carambolage, as no contact was made, but there’s a lot of dust offline, making it hard to see the car as they venture out into the hinterlands beyond the track. Toyota goes 1-2 at the start of the race as was highlighted. Lots of argy bargy at the early stage of the race. Into The Loop for the first time, and the #31 DragonSpeed Oreca 07 came to grief right in the middle of the corner. That car stopping confused the daylights out of the GT field. Former Toyota pilot, Anthony Davidson is at the wheel of the DragonSpeed car. The Brit is sharing with former Formula 1 driver Pastor Maldonado of Venezuela, and Mexico’s Roberto Gonzalez.
Reboot, and do a Control Alt Delete, and Davidson was back in the race. The Ford GT’s had gotten bottled up at the start, and so, Andy Priaulx decided to open the door, and team mate Olivier Pla, followed him through. So far in this motor race, the LM GTE Pro class and the LMP2 class, both of them had been turned entirely on their heads and we’re only in the race’s first hour. The #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca 07 moved up to second in class. That’s the Tung, Aubry, Richelmi machine. Andy Priaulx is still fighting through the GTE-Pro traffic, finding and passing the Aston Martin of fellow Brit Alex Lynn, passing him for fourth in class. Lynn is sharing the #97 Aston Martin Vantage, with Belgian Maxime Martin, and that car of course, is the all new design, with the 4.0 liter turboicharged V8 motor under the bonnet, as opposed to the normally aspirated 4.5 liter units in the two Am class privateer Vantage’s that are a few years old.
Alex Lynn was passed previously by the #71 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE with another Briton, Sam Bird at the wheel of it, sharing with Italian Davide Rigon. Toyota runs 1-2, and the #8 is running harry flatters trying to close down on the sister car, #7. Alex Lynn got mugged by Olivier Pla and Alessandro Pier Guidi, in the second AF Corse Ferrari. Pier Guidi is sharing the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 with season long team mate, Brit, James Calado. There’s trouble for poor old Mikhail Aleshin in the #11 SMP Racing BR01. “No! Not the engine!” he cries to his crew. “Sorry, Mikhail, it’s the engine.” Its game over, as Aleshin expires from the race in a plume of very expensive smoke. SMP are down to one car. One single bullet, left in the gun.
Great racing continues in LM GTE Pro between Porsche and Aston Martin, with their rivals from Ferrari and Ford also in the game, yet. Toyota #7 still leads as there’s plenty of action all over the track. We now press the fast forward button, to the middle of race, and what went on in hour three. As we’ve seen, Toyota #7, the Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Jose Maria Lopez car, went to the front. Andy Priaulx is putting on a clinic on how to work your way from the tail end of the field, to the sharp end. Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE, has a fight on his hands with Olivier Pla in Ford GT #66 and one of the Porsche’s, the #92 911 RSR of Michael Christensen, the Dane, sharing with the French Porsche ace, Kevin Estre. The Estre/Christensen team will pit early for tires, throwing a slight spanner into their strategy. By the third hour, Toyota #7 had resumed in P1. The real battles are now seem in LMP2, GTE Pro, and GTE Am.
Stefan Mucke moves into a podium place in Ford GT #66. The Toyota’s continue to play cat and mouse. The #8 Alonso/Buemi/Nakajima car wants the lead from the sister car of Conway, Kobayashi, and Lopez. Debris,, and a rather slow moving Ferrari bring out the first full course yellow of the motor race. Said slow Ferrari is the trouble plagued #70 MR Racing machine, of Olivier Beretta of Monaco, Motoaki Ishikawa of Japan, and Eddie Cheever III., son of World Sports Car and IndyCar veteran, and 1998 Indianapolis 500 winner, Eddie Cheever. Cheever is listed as hailing from Italy, but may actually reside in the U.S. The full course yellow caused yet another car to retire. The #4 ByKolles CLM P1/01 Nissan with its 3.0 liter turbocharged V6, and Austrian driver Rene Binder at the controls, was punted out of the motor race right on cue.
To be fair, Binder was going too fast, and the bloke spun himself out. He was traveling faster than the mandated slow zone limit of 80 kilometers per hour under yellow flag conditions. To be clear, slow zones are different, than full course yellow flags. Pit stops routinely happen under the yellow, and when the race resumes, so does the scrap between the two Toyota’s. #8 is instructed by the crew to move ahead of its sister car, as the #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca experiences a flattened tire. This moves their sister car, #38, to the LMP2 class lead. More argy bargy, and it’s another of the SMP cars. This time, the #17 BR Engineering BR01 of Egor Orudzhev of Russia, slams one of the AF Corse Ferrari 488’s and causes a puncture for the #71 Sam Bird and Davide Rigon driven 488 GTE.
Rigon limps back to the pit lane. Speaking of the lane, there’s some trouble for the #66 Ford GT, leading LM GTE Pro. Under a safety car for debris on the road, the Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke driven Ford GT had the driver’s door come loose, and the mechanics have to scramble to replace it. AF Corse leads LM GTE Pro, and the #8 Toyota, it’s a Sunday drive for that bunch. The #51 AF Corse Ferrari, would head to the top of GTE Pro, as there’s problems for the #28 TDS Racing Oreca 07 of Loic Duval, Francois Perrodo, and Matthieu Vaxiviere. The all-French squad is in the garage, making repairs. Despite, punctured tires, off course excursions, and a drive through penalty, the two Jackie Chan DC Racing machines are tops in LMP2.
Toyota still dominates LMP1. In LM GTE Am, a spirited drive from TF Sport and their Aston Martin, as they move around the Project 1 Porsche, cars #90 and #56, respectively, who have been mentioned during the race. Toyota made a routine pit stop, for a front nose change. So, there was position swapping amongst the two Toyota’s as #7 assumed the lead for a brief time. Will they get their first win? They want it, but their team mates have been fairly unstoppable throughout the race to this point.
A couple of pit stops, or stop and hold penalties for some of the GTE Am contenders, as the battles continued into the sixth and final hour of the race. TF Sport and Team Project 1 were both delayed on their pit stops. These delays, were penalties handed to them, by the stewards, allowing the #77 Dempsey Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR, winners last time out in the biggest race in the world, at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, to move ahead. Matt Campbell from Australia, Julien Andlauer from France, and Germany’s Christian Ried they could be on the way to another win.
The #1 Rebellion R13 Gibson had a long pit stop to fix the tail. The back decklid/engine cover didn’t fit right after damage. A delay for the two driver team of Neel Jani and Andre Lotterer, would put them out of contention. Bruno Senna, injured in qualifying, sat out the race. Lotterer and Jani would not make it to the podium. Their sister car, #3, in the hands of Thomas Laurent of France, Mathias Beche, of Switzerland, and American Gustavo Menezes, would have the better result. In the closing moments, Ford came clawing back onto the LM GTE Pro podium, playing a bit of dodge ‘em cars with one of the factory Porsche’s. Project 1 finally got the best of TF Sport in LM GTE Am on the final lap of the race.
In the Prototype classes, the cars that started 1-2, finished 1-2. In LMP2, it was Jackie Chan DC Racing doubling up and scoring the class win, and overall, Toyota wins their third straight! It is also the third straight triumph, for the #8 team of Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi, and Kazuki Nakajima! Three different manufacturers, in as many races in the “super season”, have won in LM GTE Pro. This time, Ferrari scores the LM GTE Pro honors with the #51 AF Corse car of Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Daniel Serra, the rapid Brazilian driver, son of former Formula 1 racer, Chico Serra. The doubling up for Jackie Chan’s team does mean the second win of the “Super Season” for the #38 car of Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry, and Stephane Richelmi. Speaking of doubles, to top their triumph at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the #77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR of Matt Campbell, Christian Ried, and Julien Andlauer wins again!
So, the winners from the 6 Hours of Silverstone in the English midlands are:
Overall/LMP1: #8 Alonso/Buemi/Nakajima Toyota TS050 Hybrid
LMP2: #38 Tung/Aubry/Richelmi Oreca 07 Gibson
LM GTE Pro: #51 Pier Guidi/Calado/Serra Ferrari 488 GTE
LM GTE Am: #77 Campbell/Ried/Andlauer Porsche 911 RSR
The FIA WEC “Super Season” leaves Europe, until the season wraps up with Spa and Le Mans in 2019. The next three races will be in Asia, and then, the United States. We will see you again, in mid-October, on Toyota’s home track, at Fuji Speedway in Japan, for the 6 Hours of Fuji, on Sunday, October 14th. Join us, for a late night race, which actually takes place during the day in Japan, but is late at night on the U.S. time zones. It’ll be worthwhile to stay up late to see this one. If you have Motor Trend on Demand, fire up your mobile device, and join us, to check out the race when it happens. So long, from Jolly Old England, and we’ll see you, in Japan, in October.
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