WEC: Triple success for Porsche hypercars in Qatar

The Porsche Penske Motorsport team claimed its first victory in the World Endurance Championship when its Porsche 963 hypercar crossed the finish line first at the WEC season-opening race in Qatar. Furthermore, the remaining places on the podium at the end of the “1812 km of Qatar” were also taken by teams racing the same sports prototypes.

Of course, the cars of the famous German brand have achieved many victories in the past, including in the general classification in the WEC stages, but the last time was in 2017, after which Porsche shortened its endurance racing program. Now, in a new phase of history, when this championship is once again at the peak of popularity, Porsche has returned and joins forces with Roger Penske’s American team.

But while the Porsche Penske Motorsport drivers only reached the podium once in the LMDh class last year, they now started the season with a victory. The prize was won by crew no. 6, consisting of Laurent Vantour, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer. Second place was taken by the trio of the British team Jota (Will Stevens/Callum Ilott/Norman Nato) and the second Porsche Penske crew, performing under number 5, took the third step of the podium (Matt Campbell/Michael Christensen /Frederik Makowiecki).

However, this team was lucky, because until the penultimate lap of the race, the Peugeot team hypercar with Jean-Eric Vergne at the wheel was in second place, but literally just before the finish suffered technical problems and in the end it only achieved a 7th place.

Fourth at the finish of the race, which lasted almost 10 hours, was the factory Cadillac team (Alex Lynn/Earl Bamber/Sébastien Bourdais), and the top five was completed by the Italian team AF Corse, which was armed with the Ferrari 499P hypercar, and was driven by Robert Kubica, Robert Schwartzman and Yifei Ye. They became the best of the three teams competing in sports prototypes built in Maranello.

Everyone has long been accustomed to Toyota’s success on the WEC circuits, but this time the drivers of the Japanese team took only sixth place: it is somewhat unusual to see Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway there. From this year onwards, Nyck de Vries will also be part of their crew.

The Alpine team achieved its first points in the debut race of the A424 hypercar driven by Charles Milesi, Ferdinand Habsburg and Paul-Loup Chatin – they took 9th place. In the last row of the top ten in the final protocol of the race in Qatar is another Toyota crew consisting of Sebastien Buemi, Rio Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley.

The trio of the Lamborghini factory team, for which Daniil Kvyat competes together with his teammates Mirko Bortoloti and Edoardo Mortara, is in 14th place.