Webber Brings Home Porsche 1-2 at Nurburgring

After having won Le Mans back in June, Porsche now grabbed a 1-2 finish at the Nurburgring, marking the second consecutive WEC (World Endurance Championship) win for the German carmaker.

A bumper 62,000 crowd enjoyed three days of excellent WEC action on the first ever visit to Germany.

The No. 17 Porsche 919 Hybrid fought back after a long early pit stop to replace damaged front bodywork.

Whilst it was the #18 team of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb that led from the start, they soon encountered problems when it was discovered there was an issue with the car’s fuel flow, allowing it to consume much more than necessary.

After emerging from his first penalty, Marc Lieb engaged in a bit of wheel-banging with Webber, which briefly saw the cars touching at turn two and crank Wolfgang Hatz’s blood pressure up a few notches. Nevertheless, the other two penalties, which were considerably longer, ruined any chance for the podium.

The best of the Toyota TS040 Hybrids driven by Sebastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson ended up on a 1m38.689s in fifth position. Porsche has now given official word that the LMP1 racing program, centered around the 2015 Porsche 919 Hybrid prototype , will continue until 2018. The ByKolles vehicle even recovered from losing its rear wing on the main straight to finish the race in 18th position overall.

The pairing benefited from misfortunes from both of the Rebellion R-One AERs, including the Le Mans class-winning No. 13 auto, which only completed a single lap. In LMP2, the No. 47 KCMG auto continued in the lead after the opening round of stops.

The Hong Kong entered team scored a second win in as many races to extend its title leads in th driver and teams title fight.

There were 33 entries at the last race that hosted all four classes, at Road America in Wisconsin, and we expect at least that many entries for the Lone Star Le Mans TUDOR Championship race, which is the next to last of the season, with the finale set for October 3 for the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.

Matt Howson was able to chase down Roman Rusinov’s No. 26 G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan and pulled off a conclusive move into the first corner, before working on regaining another gap.

Richard Bradley again had to battle his way back up from sixth after the final stops, but put in some sizzling times to extended their LMP2 title lead to 15 points.

G-Drive Racing didn’t have an answer to KCMG ORECA05-Nissan’s pace today but still claimed a fine double podium position.

LMGTE Pro saw another Porsche 1-2, as Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen piloted the #91 911 RSR to victory over team-mates Patrick Pilet and Frederic Makowiecki.

The win was Hartley’s first in the World Endurance Championship, and the car’s first since Porsche’s return to the series past year.

Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander claimed the GTE Pro pole aboard their AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia. Again the fight was heated but another puncture for the Ferrari gave the Porsche substantial breathing space.

This puts the trio just 17 points behind their Porsche teammates Lotterer, Fassler and Treluyer, with the latter having taken second place at both Silverstone and Spa in their No. 19 racecar.