FIA WEC - Shanghai: Victory for old champions, title fight is still opened

Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard are the winners of the 6 hours of Shanghai, the eighth and penultimate round of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship season.

This is fourth win of the season for the defending world champions in the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid, but they dropped out from the title fight ahead of season’s finale at Bahrain (November 19). Only two crews could take the drivers’ title for 2016 – the #2 Porsche crew and the #6 Toyota squad. Porsche Team secures Manufacturers’ title after today’s race.

The #6 Toyota crew stays in the championship fight ahead of season’s finale at Bahrain

The second Porsche crew in the #2 car – Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas, stayed in the championship lead after finishing fourth at Shanghai International Circuit. With one more race to go, they have 17-point advantage over Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin. The trio in the #6 Toyota TS050 Hybrid finished second at Shanghai. Toyota takes two places on the podium today, as the #5 crew (Anthony Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima) finished third.

LMP2 world championship titles for Signatech Racing

In the LMP2 class, the #26 G-Drive Racing‘s Oreca 05 (Nissan), driven by Will Stevens, Roman Rusinov and Alex Brundle, scored second consecutive victory. The LMP2 championship titles, both in teams’ and drivers’ classification, are taken by Signatech Racing‘s #36 crew – Nicolas Lapierre, Gustavo Menezes and Stephane Richelmi. They finished fourth today, but it was enough to secure the title ahead of season’s finale.

New world champions – Signatech Racing

In GT classes, both GTE Pro and GTE Am, the title fight would be resumed in Bahrain. In today’s race, Ford Chip Ganassi takes 1-2 victory, with the #67 car in front of #66. The winning drivers were Harry Tincknell and Andy Priaulx, with Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla in another car.

In the GTE Am class, Aston Martin Racing’s #98 crew (Pedro Lamy, Paul Dalla Lana and Mathias Lauda) scored third conecutive win and fifth win of the season, but the title fight is still opened.