The reigning 24 Hours of Le Mans champions hit the top step of the podium today in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s six-hour battle at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. Loic Duval, Allen McNish and Tom Kristensen in the No. 2 Audi R18 e-tron quattro earned overall and LMP1 wins by a margin of 23.6 seconds over the No. 8 Toyota TS030 Hybrid of Anthony Davidson, Stephane Sarrazin, and Sebastian Buemi, which provided the Audi camp with a stiff push during the proceedings.
“The car was faultless and it ran really well,” McNish said afterwards during the WEC’s worldwide streaming broadcast. “The guys set it up extremely well considering we had such a lack of practice time, and I’m very, very pleased.”
In the LMP2 category, IZOD IndyCar Series part-timer Mike Conway helped the No. 26 G-Drive Racing ORECA 03 Nissan net top honors for the second consecutive WEC race alongside co-drivers Roman Rusinov and John Martin.
“Hopefully we can keep this going on for the next few rounds,” Martin said. “It’s amazing. The team’s done an absolutely awesome job all weekend. We’ve been the fastest in every session – just amazing.”
GTE-Pro top honors went to the No. 99 Aston Martin Vantage V8 of Fred Makowiecki and Bruno Senna, nephew of Formula One great Ayrton Senna. Aston Martin also reigned supreme in GTE-AM, securing a 1-2 finish in class with the No. 96 combo of Jamie Campbell-Walter and Stuart Hall taking the checkers by 1.5 seconds over the No. 95 trio of Nicki Thiim, Kristian Poulsen and Christoffer Nygaard.
The WEC now moves on to Japan, where they’ll stage another six-hour run at Toyota-owned Fuji Speedway on October 20.