Rain, fog, red flag – Porsche 919 Hybrids finish third and fourth at the FIA WEC Fuji

October 16, 2017 Tim Havermans 919, Andre Lotterer, Brendon Hartley, Earl Bamber, FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), LMP1, Neel Jani, Nick Tandy, Timo Bernhard

Drivers Porsche 919 Hybrid car number 1:

Neel Jani (33, Switzerland): “I was second in the car and then drove again at the end. Eventually I was in the car when both the red flags came out. I think I’m familiar with the procedures now. It was a close race with Toyota. It appears they were better in heating up their tyres. We could always catch up but then the next safety car or yellow came out. I have never previously experienced a race like this. Visibility sometimes was zero, it was just a question of how to survive.”

André Lotterer (35, Germany): “On the initial laps I had big problems to get the tyres to work. They were too cold and it was driving like on ice. Somehow the Toyotas managed this better and so I lost two positions. Losing an aero part from the front when I touched with Sébastien Buemi cost more downforce. But finally I got the tyres up to temperature and then the car was really fast.”

Nick Tandy (32, Great Britain): “It went really well on my stint until the safety car came out. The tyres cooled down and it was difficult to make a restart. I think Toyota was on a slightly different tyre strategy – better than us on the restarts but not on the longer runs. Unfortunately this race didn’t have many long runs!”

Porsche 919 Hybrid, Porsche LMP Team: Earl Bamber, Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley

Drivers Porsche 919 Hybrid car number 2

Earl Bamber (27, New Zealand): “I started the race and the visibility, especially in traffic, with spray and fog was really very, very bad. I didn’t see anything. It was the right call to red flag the race after a bit over an hour. The water level wasn’t the problem but the fog had to clear and that didn’t happen.”

Timo Bernhard (36, Germany): “After I took over from Earl, I had huge problems to get the tyres to work. I was driving in heavy traffic with lots of spray and very poor visibility. There wasn’t much I could do to heat the rubber up. Then the leader overtook me and the safety car came out. That was very unfortunate for us.”

Brendon Hartley (27, New Zealand): “It was going great for Earl in the beginning. He was in P1, leading by over ten seconds, but then we had safety car after safety car which obviously affected our race. We had very tricky conditions today with a slippery track and poor visibility. But we kept the car on track and had clean stints.”