At the traditional pre-Le Mans warm-up, the Audi and Porsche battle was settled by who managed to stay the most out of trouble, while Toyota gave a glimpse into untapped potential.
Who feels brave enough to pick a winner for the 24 Hours of Le Mans? You would have some excellent inside knowledge or nerves of steel if you can do so after the first two rounds of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship. Especially as the first two races have already featured the privateer LMP1 team Rebellion take an overall podium at the 6 Hours of Silverstone and the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, the traditional Le Mans warm-up.
How exactly did that happen? Especially as the 2015 season saw the top three overall spots in pretty much every round get snapped up by Porsche, Audi and Toyota? Well, part of it is on account of new technological approaches by Audi and Toyota that have led to some reliability problems. And partly also because of some unforeseen turn of events. Who could have known that the #7 Audi of Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler would be disqualified after winning at Silverstone on the road on account of excessive wear on its front skid-plank?
Who could have known that the #1 Porsche of Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley would throw away what was very likely a win at Silverstone when Hartley crashed out while trying to lap a GTE car?
The theme of uncertainty continued at Spa where Porsche were untouchable in practice and qualifying and where the #1 car looked set to run off into the distance with the #2 machine of Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas providing support. But the #1 machine suffered a puncture twice on account of what was most likely debris from previous clashes between other cars.
On top of that the #2 car lost around half of the 1,000 bhp available to it early in the race when its hybrid system failed. But just as they inherited a win at Silverstone when the #7 Audi was disqualified, the #2 car finished the race in Spa in second place simply on account of none of the other front-runners being able to keep their cars going trouble free. The big exception to that was the #8 Audi of Lucas Di Grassi, Oliver Jarvis and Loic Duval that took the win.
And if that seems like a foregone conclusion to you, trust us, it wasn’t! Toyota, which had struggled with its new TS050 Hybrid at Silverstone because it was committed to running a Le Mans-spec aero package until the 24 hour event, was flying in Belgium. Through the fast corners and long straights of the fabled Spa circuit, Toyota were looking like it could finally make a proper challenge to Porsche and Audi. And not just over six hours, but at Le Mans as well.
The #5 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima looked set to win as it entered the fourth hour of the race in the lead but suffered an engine failure as did the #6 Toyota of Mike Conway, Stephane Sarazzin and Kamui Kobayashi.
Amidst the chaos, both Rebellion LMP1 machines moved into the top five and grabbed third and fourth place overall. It’s for that reason that when you see the current LMP1 drivers’ championship standings after two rounds, that the #13 Rebellion of Dominik Kraihamer, Alexandre Imperatori and Matheo Tuscher are just 13 points behind the #2 Porsche team!
Go on, tell us that that’s what you predicted prior to the start of this WEC season if you dare.
At this point, pretty much the only thing that can be said with certainty is that the AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE will win Le Mans and this year’s drivers and constructors crowns. But then again, one of their cars retired from Spa as well!
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