Sports writers tend to make every event sound like an epic exercise in athletic competition, rife with drama and studded with amazing stories.
Every so often there is an event which actually exceeds those exaggerations; in which case, what is a sportswriter to do?
The FIA World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Silverstone was such a race. Six of the fastest, most advanced automobiles on the planet raced flat-out for six hours; after 201 laps (a new course record) five were still racing at full pace; the winning #7 Adu R18 e-tron quattro had a gap of less than five second over the second-placed #18 Porsche 919 Hybrid, and 15 over the third-placed #1 Toyota TS 040 Hybrid.
“A perfect day for Audi and our team,” Audi driver André Lotterer said in a press statement. “We were under pressure from the first to the last lap and could not afford to slip. We managed to do this and the team did everything at the pit stops and with the perfect strategy.
“Now, we’re going to take this momentum with us to Spa and to Le Mans.”
The winning Audi started the race with electrical failure; the car wouldn’t launch when the green flag waved, and dropped back two-thirds of the way through the field. Bernard Tréluyer fought back to the front before handing off to Marcel Fässler, who drove an heroic triple stint before turning the car over to André Lotterer.
Porsche controlled the race for the first 44 laps, when Mark Webber brought the #17 into the garage with a ruined transmission. Audi and Toyota fought hard over third through fifth until Webber retired, then started chasing Mark Lieb in the #18. Benôit Tréluyer in the #7 Audi hounded Lieb until both pitted on laps 52 and 53.
Alex Wurz in the #2 Toyota inherited the lead when the rest of the leaders pitted; tens econds behind him came Porsche, Audi, the second Toyota, and the other Audi.
Most motor racing features overtaking; at Silverstone, there were more passes per lap for a dozen laps that most Formula One races have in two hours. Between laps 54 and 67 the #18 Porsche driven by Marcel Fässler and the #7 Audi , driven by Neel Jani, swapped second place a couple of times per lap at least. Fässler pushed the high-downforce Audi past on the outside of every corner, while Jani used the Porsche’s 8-megajoule ERS system to accelerate back ahead on every straight no matter how short.
Even the racers’ fellow drivers took note. “The gripping duel between Marcel Fässler and Porsche driver Neel Jani across many laps in which the two Swiss overtook each other several times per lap was particularly impressive,” André Lotterer said later.
There was more racing action in these 40 or so minutes than in most half-hour highlight reels—and while those two cars were fighting there were similar battles all throughout the rest of the fields.
Finally Jani had to admit defeat; he was ready to keep fighting, but his right rear brake was overheating. Porsche, seeing they couldn’t match Audi on pure pace, decided to stretch its fuel instead. Meanwhile Toyota proved it could double-stint its tires, and took the lead via a quicker pit stop.
Audi responded in kind, and still kept the pace high enough that Porsche couldn’t quite shrink the gap to less than the length of a pit stop.
Neel Jani did his best, taking only a left front tire at his last stop on lap 172 in an effort to maintain track position, but he came out a minute behind the leading Audi and just lacked enough laps to close the gap.
As the race ran down, it seemed that whichever team could do the most precise time fuel fill might take the win. Toyota came in first, but took almost 30 seconds of fuel, and fell to third. Then, with 18 laps left, as Audi was about to pit, the #7 car was given a stop-and-go penalty for exceeding track limits.
This was an exceedingly questionable call. in the incident in question, the leading Audi and Porsche exited Club Corner at full chat they came upon a GTE Aston Martin; both ran wide to avoid a major collision. Every P1 car had exited wide at that corner repeatedly throughout the race, and continued to do so after Audi was penalized; but only that one instance was called.
Possibly Race Director Eduardo Freitas decided that since the Audi cut in front of the Aston while the Porsche went behind, the Audi impeded the GTE car. In any case, the penalty was called, and it seemed Audi was going to lose the race.
Leena Gade, engineer for the #7 Audi, had no intention of quitting. She told Marcel Fässler to pit for fuel only, a ten-second timed fill, to get the car back out on track without losing the lead. She let Fassler stretch the gap for a lap and then called him in to serve the penalty.
This strategy kept Fässler in the lead, if only by a few seconds, and Fässler was not about to let go of victory at this point.
Neel Jani in the Porsche pushed as hard as he could cutting the gap in half, but he didn’t have enough laps. Sébastien Buemi ion the #1 Toyota likewise pushed hard, but couldn’t catch the two leaders.
“Congratulations to Marcel, André and Ben, who delivered fantastic motorsport for six hours today,” said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich in a press release. “This victory is a dream start of the season and a great reward for the whole squad for the hard work last winter. At the same time, this success motivates us even more for the great challenges awaiting us the next few weeks. The weekend at Silverstone has also shown that we could be facing what may be the most thrilling and fiercely contested WEC season ever.”
Despite the intense action there were very few collisions and only two caution periods, both handled excellently by the Virtual Safety Car, WEC’s version of Code 60. Only four laps were lost out of 201 total, despite there being 29 cars on track in four classes, all racing hard for six hours.
