While it was already deep night in Europe, events were taking place on the other side of the Atlantic that could still cheer up the Ferrari fans, who were already great after Charles Leclerc’s victory at Monza.
The six-hour WEC race, held at the Texas Circuit of the Americas (COTA), ended in victory for the AF Corse crew driving the Ferrari 499P hypercar. Russian motorsport fans in particular must be happy, as Robert Schwartzman is part of this trio, together with Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye.
Thus, in the six stages of the World Endurance Championship that have already taken place, there have been six different winners – sixth place went to the drivers of crew No. 83. At the start of the seventh hour of the race in Austin, the yellow Ferrari hypercar crossed the line first, 1.780 seconds ahead of Toyota No. 7, which had recently been penalised for a yellow flag infringement.
The stewards’ decision came as the crew of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nick de Vries led, but a pit lane penalty dropped them to 2nd position, with Robert Schwartzman taking the race to victory – the first for AF Corse in 2024.
The Japanese team’s hypercar took second place, with third place going to another trio driving a car built in Maranello: the number 50 crew of the Ferrari AF Corse works team, consisting of Miguel Molina, Niklas Nielsen and Antonio Fuoco.
“The pace of Toyota was very confident and when I was behind their car I tried to keep up with them,” said Robert after the finish. “At one point in the middle of that segment I got information that the Toyota crew had probably broken the rules, so I had to get closer because we didn’t know exactly how they would get a penalty.
I tried to do everything in my power, and in the end, when they served their penalty, all I had to do was keep the car on the track until the finish, although it was very difficult, because the grip deteriorated in the last laps. The car slid and it was difficult to drive. But I’m happy that in the end we showed a good result!
I think we can call it compensation for Le Mans, where we were very disappointed when we missed out on the win, but in the end we won the race here.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
