Toyota took first and third. Alpine finished second.
SPA-FRANCHORCHAMPS, Belgium—Toyota Gazoo Racing was the first hypercar to be tested for this season. It lived up to its name on a clear Saturday afternoon as Sebastian Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima, and Brendon Hartley took the opening race of the WEC season ahead of the French Alpine driven by Andre Negrao, Nichols Lapierre, and Mattieu Vaxiviere. Toyota completed the hypercar and overall results by taking third with Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez.
The Japanese giant took the lead early, with Conway leading in the first three-quarters of an hour before moving to second because Buemi was driving the faster car. Alpine took their time and slowly caught the Toyotas midway through the race. The teams traded leads back and forth most of the six hours, with Alpine leading in the final hour.
But the French entry driven by Negrao had to pit one more time and, in the process, had to slow down because of an additional puncture.
By this time, Buemi had retained the lead, which was enough to take the lead for good. Kobayashi certainly had a chance to take second from the Alpine entry, but his Toyota hybrid seized up at Les Combes, and the Japanese had to wait minutes to recycle the engine, which lost his chance to get the runner-up spot.
United Autosports won the title last season and got off to a good start by taking fourth overall and first in the LMP 2 category with Phil Hanson, Filipe Albuquerque, and new Swiss teammate Fabio Scherer at the controls. The second and third went to both JOTA entries, but Tom Blomqvist driving the third-place car, sideswiped Negrao going up Eau Rouge, and had to serve a drive-through penalty. This pushed the team to third, but the penalty did not ruin the chance to take the last step of the podium.
For the GTE Pro category, it was a start-to-finish victory for the duo Porsche GT team of Kevin Estre and his new Swiss teammate Neel Jani. The two took the lead and were able to hold off both challenging AF Corse Ferrari’s.
In the GTE am class, the excitement started early–even before the race began–as the Gulf Racing entry of Michael Wainwright crashed his Porsche at Bus Stop and could not start the race. TF Sport’s American driver, Ben Keating, took the early lead and within a half-hour was passed by the Dempsey-Proton Porsche, driven by Matt Campbell.
But as the afternoon went on, Campbell could not hold the lead, thanks to an electronics issue, which gave the lead to the AF Corse Ferrari driven by defending GTE am champions Francois Perrodo, Nicklas Nielsen, and Alessio Rovera, who held on to the win after obtaining the lead midway through the race. Keating’s TF Sport managed to take second as a consolation prize. It was a deserving prize, too, because he was run off the track at Puchon when Juan Pablo Montoya shoved Romain Rusnov’s G-Drive entry in the opening hour of the race and then tapped Keating right off the track. Luckily, Keating had plenty of run-off room to recover back onto the circuit.
The WEC will take a month’s break before the next race, scheduled at Portimao, Portugal, on the 12th of June.
