"It's all just a little bit of history repeating..."
The 6 Hours of Silverstone duel between Marcel Fässler in the Audi R18 e-tron quattro and Neel Jani in the Porsche, was one of the most spectacular duels in recent history.
The new hybrid regulations have resulted in vastly different technological concepts - or as Mark Webber might say: ‘more than one way to skin a cat’. As a result, Fässler and Jani’s continual overtaking (often several times per lap. Over a race distance, Audi had the fastest car at Silverstone, but not everywhere. Where the R18 displayed almost law-defying grip in the corners, was negated by Porsches stunning acceleration advantage by virtue of their larger hybrid system. Both the respective strengths of Audi and Porsche are something Toyota will be looking at very carefully if they hope to make up the ground they appear to have lost over the winter break.
The European Le Mans Series also staked their claim for the most exciting race finish of 2015 with just 0.370 seconds separating the The Greaves Motorsport Gibson 015S-Nissan of Jon Lancaster and Harry Tincknell’s Jota Sport Gibson-Nissan.
Much attention was directed towards Lancaster’s robust move on the TDS Oreca 05 of Tristan Gommendy (if you haven’t seen the press conference you must watch it here), but one overlooked area was the drive times dictated between Silver and Bronze paired drivers. With Silver drivers required to perform a minimum of 2 hours and 20 minutes, the off-set drive times force some teams to run conservative lap-times or perform another pit-stop – with the former being the lesser of the two evils.
It’s potentially another area the ACO may need to look at before Monza if it hopes to encourage teams to employ the services of younger drivers coming up through the ranks.
Finally a massive congratulations to Nelson Piquet on his Long Beach ePrix win. During his brief Formula One career, Piquet Junior was often unfairly maligned over his cerebral (or perceived lack of) to his motor racing, however the nature his domination at Long Beach in a series that rewards finesse and energy conservation proves once again general perception is sometimes way off the mark.
Congratulations Nelson – enjoy a bevvy or two with your old man.
Trent Price, eRacing editor @realtrentprice