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Race report
Stuttgart. The reigning world champions Timo Bernhard (DE), Brendon Hartley (NZ) and Mark Webber (AU) won the thrilling six-hour race in Mexico City. By winning the fifth of nine rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), with the 919 Hybrid
In total this is the 11th victory for the innovative
Brendon Hartley starts from fourth, overtakes his team mate Marc Lieb in the sister car in turn one and gets behind the two Audis. On lap 21 he overtakes the number 7 Audi (André Lotterer) for second place. After 35 laps Hartley uses a Full Course Yellow for an early pit stop and hands over the car to Mark Webber, who continues in second place on fresh tyres. Just after the re-start Webber takes the chance to pass the number 8 Audi (Lucas Di Grassi) for the lead. Now he is the hunted and defends the lead until the penultimate lap before his pit stop. After 74 laps Webber pits, right behind Di Grassi. The
Marc Lieb drops back from second to fourth at the start. When the number 7 Audi (Lotterer) stops he improves to third. At its first pit stop after 35 laps the number 2
Fritz Enzinger, Vice President LMP1: “This was one of the most thrilling races I have ever seen – because of the enormous competition and also due to the changing track conditions. First and fourth means we’ve got a lot: another race win plus extending the lead in both the manufacturers’ and the drivers’ world championship. Many thanks to everybody! Now we return home to Weissach to make in-depth preparations for the coming race in Austin. In two weeks we want to push our mission further to defend both titles.”
Andreas Seidl, Team Principal: “What a race – once again all three manufacturers were on the podium. We managed to extend our lead in both championships, which means another step on the way to our mission of defending both World Championship titles. Congratulations to the entire team for this challenging weekend and race. Today it was difficult to get all the decisions right. For the number 1 car it worked perfectly and they deserved to win the race. For the number 2 crew our strategy didn’t work out in the changing weather conditions. On top of that, we had an incident when a LMP2 car touched the rear of our car. Afterwards we focussed on bringing home points for the championship. Also on this special circuit we have proven that our car can win a race. This makes us confident for the remaining rounds of the championship.”
Timo Bernhard (35, Germany): “Sports car racing couldn’t be any better! I was third in the car and opened a good gap on the number 8 Audi. During my second stint in the last third of the race the final 20 minutes especially turned out to be very difficult. In sector three, as it was suddenly wetter than the lap before and I made a small mistake. Luckily I didn’t touch anything and was able to continue. It was outstanding how the team prepared the 919 Hybrid for these special conditions, the new track and the altitude.”
Brendon Hartley (26, New Zealand): “What a race, I’m very happy about this race win. It was a good start, I was able to overtake Marc in turn one for P3. You could see the Audis were struggling a bit. I was unlucky with traffic, and so Di Grassi was able to make a gap of ten seconds. But then I was able to get in front of Lotterer, and it was a good battle. Later I took the lead. The stop-and-go penalty threw me back to third for a while, but the car was feeling mega and the boys did fantastic pit stops.”
Mark Webber (40, Australia): “Another race win for
Romain Dumas (38, France): “I did the third stint in our car and managed to make up a few seconds. However, some of that was lost again at the pit stop because we stopped with both cars at the same time and, therefore, I had to be pushed back. Again in the final stint of the race I did my best and managed to catch up. But in the end for us more than 12 points weren’t possible today.”
Neel Jani (32, Switzerland): “Unfortunately we have outbraked ourselves today. Because of weather forecasts not becoming reality, we were on the wrong tyres for the conditions more than once. Today we could have gained more than 12 points in the drivers’ championship because our strongest rival dropped back. It is a missed chance. Nevertheless, I’m happy for the sister car and for
Marc Lieb (36, Ludwigsburg): “Having started second, finishing fourth is not what we had hoped for. The start wasn’t easy. The Audis played very well together and I was surprised by Brendon. On my first stint especially I had difficult situations in traffic. Later in the race, when we had drizzle and rain, the track conditions were tricky. Several times our tyre choice wasn’t right. For us there was more within reach today and, therefore, we feel a bit disappointed.”
All points standings: http://www.fiawec.com/courses/classification.html
All results: http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com
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All reports on the previous season can be found in our archive.