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Shanghai WEC: Conway, Lopez and Kobayashi lead Toyota one-two

Toyota recorded a fourth victory of the 2018/19 World Endurance Championship superseason with a one-two finish in a stop-start wet Shanghai race.

Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi scored their second consecutive win in the #7 TS050 Hybrid, ahead of the sister #8 car shared by Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi.

Heavy rain caused two lengthy stoppages in the opening half of the race, and it was not until hour four that conditions improved sufficiently to allow serious green-flag action to commence.

The #8 car had been ahead during the early stages, but the #7 managed to jump ahead because it made its second stop on a lap during which the field was being led through the pitlane.

Alonso then lost further time being held up by a red light at the end of the pits when he took over from Buemi, handing the #7 car an advantage of some 20 seconds.

That grew to as large as half a minute before Nakajima began to close the gap to Conway, but the safety car was deployed with 20 minutes to go after a crash for the #17 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1.

The two Toyotas held position in the final six minutes when the safety car came in, Conway crossing the line 1.4 seconds clear of Nakajima.

Jenson Button secured his first WEC podium in the surviving SMP BR1 he shared with Russian duo Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov, a lap down on the winning Toyota.

Rebellion's Neel Jani, Bruno Senna and Andre Lotterer had to be content with fourth after Lotterer dropped 16 seconds in the wet closing stages.

The #3 Rebellion lost two laps early on when Thomas Laurent hit the barriers under the safety car, but the first stoppage allowed the car to be repaired and it recovered to fifth, three laps down.

LMP2 honours went to Jackie Chan DC Racing for the third time in a row, with Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry and Stephane Richelmi picking up their second victory of 2018.

The #38 Oreca trio came out on top in a straight fight with the #31 DragonSpeed machine shared by Anthony Davidson, Pastor Maldonado and Roberto Gonzalez, despite two late spins for Aubry.

Aston Martin secured its first victory in the GTE Pro class with its new Vantage GTE, which finished seventh overall ahead of the LMP2-winning #38 Oreca.

The #95 shared by Danish duo Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen took full advantage of the British marque's speed in the wet conditions.

However, the #97 machine of Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin was reeled in and passed with around 30 minutes to go by Richard Lietz in the #91 Porsche 911 RSR he shares with Gianmaria Bruni.

The Dempsey-Proton squad of Matt Campbell, Julien Andlauer and Christian Ried recovered from the blow of losing all the points it has scored so far in the 2018/19 season by taking victory in GTE Am.

Zdroj: autosport.com