TOYOTA DOMINATES AT SILVERSTONE
Toyota defied its own pre-race predictions by securing a comfortable 1-2 finish in the opening round of the new World Endurance Championship season at Silverstone, a lap ahead of the best of the privateer LMP1S.
The Japanese manufacturer, which swept all before it during the 2018-19 ‘superseason’ (except, incidentally at Silverstone, where both cars were disqualified in postrace scrutineering), had been handed an extra 28kg since the previous ‘regular’ WEC race at Spa in May, among other rule breaks designed to give the non-hybrids a fighting chance.
After the best of the Rebellion
Gibson R-13s matched his team’s pace in Friday’s free practice sessions, Toyota technical director Pascal Vasselon declared that the Rebellions had, at least on paper, the race pace to win. But in reality, there was no way the Oreca-built cars could mount anything more than a fleeting challenge.
The #3 Rebellion shared by Loic Duval, Pipo Derani and Nathanael Berthon did actually enjoy two spells in the lead of the four-hour race, on both occasions assisted by well-timed visits to the pits during caution periods. But in green flag running, the Rebellions were always totally powerless to hold off the hybrid-assisted Toyotas.
That meant it was once again a straight fight between the #7 and #8 Toyota TS050 HYBRIDS for the top spot and, after multiple swaps of position throughout, it was the #7 crew of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez that prevailed.
The order was effectively settled by an instruction from the pitwall allowing Kobayashi back ahead of Toyota new boy Brendon Hartley in the #8 car, which came just before both cars made their penultimate stops in which Kobayashi handed the #7 to Lopez and Hartley made way for Nakajima.
Nakajima got close to Lopez again in the final half-hour, but Toyota policy is always to freeze the positions after the last stops, and so it was the #7 crew that took a narrow victory by just under two seconds.
The #3 Rebellion completed the podium, but would have probably finished on the lead lap without a pair of late stop-and-go penalties for fuel flow infringements.
On the other side of the Rebellion garage, the race was more tumultuous, with the #1 car of Norman Nato, Gustavo Menezes and Bruno Senna dropping a lap after Nato clattered into a couple of his mechanics when he came in for wet tyres during a mid-race rain shower. Luckily, a broken toe was the most serious injury incurred in the incident.
After that, the car was parked for five minutes late on to resolve a power steering problem, which put the #1 Rebellion down to 10th overall and fifth of the LMP1S, behind the best of the Team Lnt-run Ginetta-aer G60-LT-P1S.
The #5 Ginetta of Charlie Robertson, Egor Orudzhev and Ben Hanley was five laps down at the finish, but enjoyed a largely smooth run except for when Hanley got beached in the gravel at Luffield on his out-lap, losing several minutes in the process.
It was an altogether more eventful race for the #6 Ginetta, which lost a wheel early on before losing more time with multiple early garage visits and a mid-race clash with a GTE Pro Ferrari at Becketts while Oliver Jarvis was at the wheel.
In LMP2, the Cool Racing squad took a dream debut victory thanks to the efforts of Nicolas Lapierre and Antonin Borga, who raced as a duo in their ORECA after Alexandre Coigny injured his hip in a heavy European Le Mans Series crash the previous day.
Cool benefited hugely from the second safety car, which eradicated a lead of more than a minute for the Tds-run Racing Team Nederland ORECA that had been built by the Dutch squad’s replacement for the absent Nyck de Vries, Job van Uitert.
However, van Uitert had already lost the lead to Lapierre when he had to hand over to gentleman driver Frits van Eerd, who was beaten to second in the closing stages by the Signatech Alpine ORECA of Thomas Laurent, Andre Negrao and Pierre Ragues.
Anthony Davidson was another to have to sit out the race due to injury, suffering pain in his ribs from a karting crash some weeks back.
His team-mates in the #38 Jota Sport ORECA, Antonio Felix da Costa and Roberto Gonzalez, finished fifth.