WEC – Nürburgring: a dream result for Porsche

Porsche dominated the 6 Hours of the Nürburgring by taking a double with the #919 17 Hybrid of Bernhard-Hartley-Webber in first place ahead of the #18 of Dumas-Jani-Lieb. The victory was decided by a simple fuel sensor problem which forced the second LMP1 to go through the pits three times to take its penalties. The winning crew now meets again 17 points behind the leaders Tréluyer-Fässler-Lotterer who reached the last step of the podium.

The start of the race, however, was to the advantage of the No. 18 which started from pole, while the sister car had to come to the pits to change its front bumper. “We were often close to victory and it finally worked.”, rejoiced Timo Bernhard. “I had a good start but lost ground during the (first) full course yellow with the lead car because of the backmarkers. The car became difficult to drive at a certain point because it had suffered damage to the front and we chose to anticipate our stop on lap 24 to change the nose. We obviously took advantage of the sister car's bad luck to take the lead, but we still did a good job. »

Morale was obviously lower on the side of the Porsche n°18 which had all the cards in hand to win without this problem causing it to lose several minutes. “The technical problem and the penalties that followed are a huge disappointment for us.”, admitted Romain Dumas. “2nd place is a superb result given the circumstances and it is very important for the Manufacturers’ Championship. We could only come back to the front because we were competitive throughout the weekend and it was partly thanks to our mechanics. »

Porsche has a 33-point lead over Audi at the end of the 6 Hours of the Nürburgring. The Stuttgart manufacturer also scored another double in GTE Pro.

Discover the analysis of the 6 Hours of the Nürburgring carried out by our special correspondents in issue 2027 of AUTOhebdo, available from Monday evening in digital version on all platforms, and from Wednesday on newsstands.