The #8 Toyota TS040 of Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi took another victory last weekend in the World Endurance Championship, with the sister #7 coming home second to complete a Toyota whitewash in Shanghai.
After a good opening stint for the pole sitting #14 Porsche it was Davidson who took the lead for the #8 crew early in the second hour, despite making an early stop under the only Safety Car period of the race, with the #7 also moving ahead in hour two. However, it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Japanese manufacture, with the #7 suffering intermittent power issues throughout the race, with the #8 also suffering the same issues, although not as severely.
In third was the pole sitting #14 Porsche, with the car, piloted by Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb, coming home in front of the two Audi’s, with the #2 coming home in front of the #1.
For the second Porsche things went disastrously wrong, with Brendon Hartley suffering a puncture towards the end of the race, with the car, which lead in the early stages, dropping down to sixth and last in LMP1-H.
In LMP1-L Rebellion Racing took another 1-2, with the #12 REBELLION R-One of Mathias Beche, Nicolas Prost and Nick Heidfeld finishing ahead of the #13 of Andrea Belicchi, Dominik Krahaimer and Fabio Leimer.
LMP1 Stats – Shanghai 2014
| Pole Lap | 1:48.300 (#14 Porsche) |
| Race Fastest Lap | 1:48.694 (#7 Toyota) |
| Race Time | 6:01’15.319 |
| Race Distance | 188 Laps |
In LMP2 G-Drive Racing came close to retaking the championship lead, with the new-for-2014 Ligier JSP2 coming home first in class, with the car, crewed by Olivier Pla, Roman Rusinov and Julien Canal claiming a flag-to-flag victory. Pla crossed the line a full three laps ahead of the Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b of Ryan Dalziel, Ricardo Gonzalez and Scott Speed.
Finishing in third was the #27 SMP Racing Oreca, with the result from drivers Sergey Zlobin, Nic Minassian and Maurizio Mediani meaning both them and G-Drive will ensure a Russian showdown in the final two races of 2014. In fourth was the sister Oreca of the Landygin brothers and Victor Shaitar.
“Today the whole team did a great job with the right strategy and solid pit stops; everyone kept calm and focused on getting the result,” said Davidson. “We showed we had the fastest car in Fuji and we’ve done that again here in Shanghai. We didn’t want to take too many risks, particularly in traffic so it was a relatively quiet race for me; Seb did all the spectacular work at the start. To get such a result at this stage of the season is huge for us and now we aim to continue like this in the final two races.”
