FIA WEC

Rebellion Racing Rise Up Above Rivals After Privateer LMP1 Win

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The #13 Lola-Toyota finished fourth overall for Rebellion Racing (Photo Credit: Chris Gurton Photography)

Rebellion Racing maintained their lead in the privateer’s team championship after a strong race at the Six Hours of Silverstone.

Following their strong run at this year’s Le Mans 24 hours, in which Rebellion were unlucky to miss out on a podium, the Swiss team were once again the best of the rest behind Audi and Toyota as the WEC visited Silverstone.

Despite this however, the event wasn’t without incident for the two car Lola entry.

Starting fifth on the grid, Neel Jani took the lead of the privateer LMP1 entries to move to fourth. However, things took a turn for the worse after Nicolas Prost took over the driving duties. He made contact with the #57 GT Ferrari losing time for bodywork repairs, before stewards deemed Prost to be at fault and gave him a stop and go penalty.

“Everything was under control until the Ferrari hit me. After that, all went wrong. The damage on the rear of the car forced us to change it,” Prost said.

“Of course we are sad not to finish first Privateer LMP1 car. I’m disappointed for Neel that has done a very strong race. Nevertheless, we scored good points for the drivers’ classification. We are now in fourth position.”

Jani retook the driving duties for the last stint in seventh place in class, but was able to pass the #22 JRM entered HPD shortly before the finish of the race.

“The penalty and the unscheduled stops ended our race because we lost more than 2 minutes doing this. And as all the cars were driving more or less at the same speed, it has been impossible to catch back up. It’s a pity but we have taken the points we could take,” said Jani.

The sister car enjoyed better luck in the six hour race. The car, which was driven by Andrea Belicchi and Harold Primat, had a strong race and was classified as the best of the privateers in fourth place after seeing off a strong challenge from the #21 Strakka HPD.

“In a way, we have taken benefit of the troubles of our sister car #12. But it is good to see that when one car of the team can’t succeed, the other one can. It shows that we are a strong team and I’m happy with that. Personally, I feel more competitive and we’ll have to be more and more efficient to stay ahead,” Primat said.

“All the team have done a fantastic job. I gave my best to stay ahead and it was hard. We had no problem during all the race and we finished with less than seven tenths in front of the Strakka HPD-Honda after a very big fight. After my victory last year here in LMS, this 6 Hours of Silverstone is again a good year!” Belicchi concluded.

 

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