By taking the fifth consecutive race win this season, in Shanghai (China), Porsche has won the constructors’ title in the World Endurance Championship with its innovative 919 Hybrid today. Now having 308 points, the sports car manufacturer from Stuttgart can’t be beaten, despite one championship race to go. Audi has 238 points and Toyota 137. * For Porsche it is the 13th constructors’ World Championship title in endurance racing and the first since 1986. Between 1964 and 1986 Porsche took twelve constructors’ titles in the then Sports Car World Championship.
The seventh of eight rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) was held as a six-hour race at the Formula One circuit of Shanghai. The winning drivers who shared the Porsche prototype were Timo Bernhard (Germany), Brendon Hartley (New Zealand) and former Formula One driver Mark Webber from Australia. The sister Porsche 919 Hybrid of Romain Dumas (France), Neel Jani (Switzerland) and Marc Lieb (Germany) crossed the finish line just behind them and made it the fourth one-two victory this season for Le Mans record winners Porsche.
This year’s double victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 14 and the world championship title came a lot earlier than expected. Porsche only returned to top-level motorsports in 2014, when it was the only German car manufacturer and the only sports car manufacturer worldwide who had three premium plug-in-hybrid cars on the market (918 Spyder, Cayenne, Panamera). Porsche was attracted by the WEC’s revolutionary efficiency regulations, which requires high performance hybrid technology from the manufacturers’ prototypes and strictly limits their energy consumption. Within a very short period of time, an entirely new infrastructure at Porsche’s R&D centre in Weissach was set up and a team of 230 experts employed.
In the GTE-Pro class for production-based GT cars, in which Porsche competes against Aston Martin and Ferrari, the Porsche 911 RSR of Richard Lietz (Austria) and Michael Christensen (Denmark) won. They race the current competition version of the iconic 911 1) production sports car. Their French team mates Frédéric Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet finished third. In this category the title will be decided at the season’s finale.
