Rain caused chaos at the recent round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, leaving kiwi Brendon Hartley fighting to bring the Porsche 919 Hybrid he shares with Tim Bernhard and Aussie Mark Webber home in fifth place.
Bernhard spun the car when the heavy rain hit at the 100 minute mark, but was towed out of the gravel in time to make the restart, after the race was red flagged and stopped for 45 minutes.
Timo Bernhard (33, Germany): “It wasn’t my day today. My stint began well before the drizzle started. I went for slick intermediate tyres but when I left the pit lane it suddenly became heavy rain. I found myself floating, I was just a passenger. Then for the restart behind the safety car we went on the safe side and took full wet tyres, but this was a disadvantage. Later with the slick intermediate tyres it was all fine. However, that’s racing.”
Brendon Hartley (24, New Zealand): “When I took over from Timo we were already one lap down. The Porsche 919 Hybrid has left a strong impression, I enjoyed driving both in the day and night. At some point I hit a big part of debris on the track, which compromised the car’s aerodynamics a bit.”
Mark Webber (38, Australia): “In the beginning it was a good battle with the Audi, but they have clearly been more comfortable in traffic and could easily pick various different lines. Temporarily I also did not have the full boost, but we were able to fix this while I was running. We have definitely learnt a lot in the high temperatures of the early part of the race and also later in the stints.”
The sister Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb finished one place ahead in fourth.
Enjoy the pictures and video from the event!
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