Paul Jeffrey
Premium
The World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Spa was a thrilling spectacle this weekend, with a surprise sprinkling of snow and plenty of bad weather for the drivers to endure.
Despite far from ideal conditions at the famous Belgian Spa-Francorchamps circuit, it would once again be Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima who took top honours in the LMP1 category of the series, the #8 Toyota crew overcoming their rivals and the weather to take a commanding lead in the drivers championship, and help secure a well deserved manufacturers victory their Toyota team.
The race to the chequered flag wouldn't be all plain sailing for the #8 however, the team lucking in somewhat as the sister TS050 would be delayed by four laps thanks to a sensor failure whilst leading by almost a full minute just short of the half distance marker - opening the way for the #8 to power into a lead they would never look likely to surrender.
With the #7 left to fight back to an eventual sixth place, Spa would be a good opportunity for the smaller privateer teams to have a moment in the spotlight, and it would be the Rebellion and SMP racing outfits who made the most of the opportunity afforded to them - with Berthon, Laurent and Menezes rounding out the day in second overall, and Aleshin, Petrov and debutant Stoffel Vandoorne (replacing former McLaren team-mate Jenson Button for the remainder of the season) taking the final LMP1 rostrum position for SMP.
Thanks to the delays encountered by the #7 Toyota, Alonso and Co. now hold a healthy 31-point advantage with only 39 left to play for at the season ending Le Mans 24 Hours next month.
"It was a difficult race with the changeable conditions, so you needed to be ready for anything that may happen," commented race winner Fernando Alonso. "Also the tyre selection was quite difficult. You never knew what tyres to put on with dry, the inters, the full wets.
"But overall it was quite extreme conditions for everyone, and on the personal side, extremely happy with the points for the championship today". added the Spanish star.
"But overall it was quite extreme conditions for everyone, and on the personal side, extremely happy with the points for the championship today". added the Spanish star.
In LMP2, victory would go to another ex-Grand Prix driver, with Pastor Maldonado performing perfectly in difficult conditions to secure victory for himself and teammates Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez. LMGTE PRO honours would go to the Aston Martin Vantage AMR of Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin, with LMGTE AM victory going to Porsche and Christian Reid, Riccardo Pera and Matt Campbell.
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