Audi takes 1-2 hybrid race car sweep in 6 Hours of Bahrain

In the 6-Hours of Bahrain, in the FIA World Endurance Championship series, Audi won the 1st and 2nd podium spots with the Audi R18 e-tron quattro. The team had switched to an all-hybrid team for the Bahrain race, and while the regular Audi R18 race car was giving excellent results, the R18 e-tron quattro was giving even better results. The other hybrid race car, the Toyota TS0300 hybrid, had to bow out after completing 144 laps.

In the 1st hour, the Toyota TS030 hybrid, driven by Nicolas Lapierre, held a 23.3 second lead over the nr1 Audi while the nr2 Audi had an extra long pit stop to repair a broken headlight. The lead had slipped by the end of the 2nd hour to 19.8 seconds. However by the end of the 3rd hour the Toyota TS030 had slipped to fifth place, and four laps behind, after a lengthy pit stop to repair a number panel light. By the end of the 4th hour the TS030 had made up some ground on the nr2 Audi, due to that car having had a long pit stop to replace headlights again.

Photo : JEAN MICHEL LE MEUR

However by hour 5 trouble struck the TS030 when Nicolas Lapierre went straight on at Turn 12 with front end damage after being involved in an incident with a back marker. This forced the Toyota hybrid race car out of the race, after the team had made a strong effort to catch up with the Audi’s.

This left the two Audi R18 e-tron quattro’s clear to take 1st and 2nd.

For the 6-Hours of Bahrain, Audi switched the team lineup to two R18 e-tron quattro’s.

The competitors in the FIA World Endurance Championship set off at 1600 hours for the 6 Hours of Bahrain, sixth round of the season, under a scorching sun and a suffocating heat relative to that of the past few days. That, however, didn’t prevent two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winners Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer from emerging ahead of the rest of the field with the No.1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro at the finish.

Source: http://www.fiawec.com/en/news/lmp-report-audi-1−2-and-strakka-on-podium-in-the-middle-east_671.html

Hybrid braking zones in use at Bahrain, source: http://www.fiawec.com/en/news/hybrid-braking-zones-for-6-hours-of-bahrain_596.html

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.