The #17 Porsche 919 Hybrid car of Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard took their second FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) win in succession at the 6 Hours of the Circuit of the Americas at Austin, Texas on Saturday, after the pole-winning Porsche of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb fell out of contention with electrical problems late in the race.
At the start of the race, Webber shot to the lead with a brilliant move on the outside of Neel Jani at the first turn. From there on, the Australian extended his advantage at the front, with Hartley further extending the #17 car's lead.
However, a pitstop infringement when a mechanic touched the car while it was being refuelled, erased their lead. This allowed the #18 Porsche of Neel Jani/Marc Leib/Romain Dumas to take the lead of the race.
But the race turned to its head with less than 30 minutes to go, as the #18 car had to pit with electrical troubles.
This allowed the #17 Porsche to retake the lead and cut the gap to the drivers' championship leaders Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler of the #7 Audi e-tron Quatro to 10 points. The trio - racing the #7 Audi - were catapulted to second place after the late-race drama, with the #8 car of Lucas di Grassi, Loic Duval and Oliver Jarvis completing the podium.
Toyota endured another difficult outing at Austin, having focused their efforts entirely on a brand new car for 2016. Defending WEC champions Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi, along with Kazuki Nakajima finished two laps down in fourth, while the other car from the Japanese manufacturer crashed midway through the race.
In LMP2, the G-Drive entry of Sam Bird, Julien Canal and Romain Rusinov took top honours, after KCMG received a 30 seconds stop/go penalty for a pitstop error. The Hong Kong based team had been demoted to the back of the grid for qualifying infringement, but was up to second place in the first hour of the race.
As was the case at the Nurburgring, Richard Leitz and Michael Christensen mirrored Porsche’s LMP1 win in the GTE Pro class, driving a 911 RSR.
In GTE Am, Ferrari claimed the honours with Victor Shaytar, Andrea Bertonlini and Aleksey Basov behind the wheels of a F458 Italia.
2015 FIA WEC Six Hours of Circuit of the Americas - LMP1 Results
- Timo Bernhard/Brendon Hartley/Mark Webber (Porsche)
- Marcel Fassler/Andre Lotterer/Benoit Treluyer (Audi) +1:06.840
- Lucas di Grassi/Loic Duval/Oliver Jarvis (Audi) +1 lap
- Anthony Davidson/Sebastien Buemi/Kazuki Nakajima (Toyota) +2 laps
- Simon Trummer/Pierre Kaffer (byKolles) +16 laps
- Romain Dumas/Neel Jani/Marc Lieb (Porsche) +17 laps
- Alexandre Imperatori/Dominik Kraihamer/Daniel Abt (Rebellion) +38 laps
- Nicolas Prost/Mathias Beche/Nick Heidfeld (Rebellion) +38 laps
- Alexander Wurz/Stephane Sarrazin/Mike Conway (Toyota) +96 laps
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