Toyota Dominates 6H Shanghai

Photo: James Moy/Toyota Racing

Toyota continued to set the mark in the FIA World Endurance Championship, as the Japanese manufacturer claimed another convincing victory in Sunday’s Six Hours of Shanghai.

Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi celebrated their fourth victory of the season, taking the No. 8 Toyota TS040 Hybrid to a 1 minute and 12-second victory over the sister No. 7 entry of Alex Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima and Stephane Sarrazin.

It was a dominant run for the championship leaders, with Davidson taking over the lead early in the second hour, despite having made an additional pit stop while under the race’s only safety car period in the opening laps.

The tactical run by Toyota to avoid a late-race splash didn’t ultimately make the difference, as both entries had built up a one-lap lead over the LMP1 competition by the final hour.

It wasn’t completely clear sailing, though, as the No. 7 Toyota battled intermittent power issues, although the situation appeared to improve in the closing stints. The No. 8 car faced similar challenges early on.

The pole-sitting No. 14 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb came home in third, ahead of the two Audi R18 e-tron quattros, which enjoyed an intra-team fight throughout the race.

The No. 2 Audi ended up fourth, with Marcel Fassler edging out Lucas Di Grassi following the final round of pit stops.

A puncture for Brendon Hartley, who led in the early stages, relegated the No. 20 Porsche to a sixth place finish overall.

LMP1-L saw Rebellion Racing take top class honors, with the No. 12 Rebellion R-One Toyota of Mathias Beche, Nicolas Prost and Nick Heidfeld returning to the top step of the podium after issues in Fuji.

G-Drive Racing inched closer to retaking the lead of the championship with another dominant class win in LMP2.

The No. 26 Ligier JS P2 Nissan of Olivier Pla, Roman Rusinov and Julien Canal claimed a flag-to-flag victory, the team’s fourth of the year and second straight with its new closed-top prototype.

Pla crossed the line a commanding three laps ahead of the No. 30 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b of Ryan Dalziel, who along with co-drivers Scott Sharp and Ricardo Gonzalez finished a season-best second in class.

The ESM entry finished ahead of both SMP Racing Oreca 03R Nissans, despite making one extra pit stop than the Russian entries, thanks to a late charge by the Scot, who recovered enough time for a splash of fuel with 30 minutes to go.

Sergey Zlobin, who finished third alongside co-drivers Nic Minassian and Maurizio Mediani, remains the championship leader but sees his lead reduced to G-Drive’s Pla, Rusinov and Canal heading into the penultimate round of the season in Bahrain in two weeks’ time.

RESULTS: Six Hours of Shanghai

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John