WEC Spa results: Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima one step closer to title

Fernando Alonso and teammates Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima moved to within striking distance of the 2018/19 World Endurance Championship title with their fourth victory of the season at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium Saturday. The win would have made them a shoo-in for the crown even without the technical problems that prevented their Toyota teammates and only rivals for the title, Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, from finishing down in sixth position.

The result in the penultimate round of the series means that Alonso and his teammates will go to the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a 31-point advantage. There are just 39 points to play for at the championship finale, meaning that the drivers of the #8 Toyota TS050 HYBRID would need to finish seventh even if their teammates win the race and claim the point for pole position.

Kobayashi, Conway and Lopez were doing everything in their power to keep the title race well and truly open heading into the second edition of Le Mans in the one-off superseason. They were more than 50 seconds up on the sister car when a sensor in the No. 7 Toyota's hybrid needed replacing late in the third hour, resulting in a five-lap stay in its pit garage.  

It would be wrong to say that this left the crew of the No. 8 with an easy run to the flag. There were no fewer than four snow showers on a freezing cold day, the extreme conditions resulting in six safety car periods, including two of the virtual kind.

"It was a pretty hard race to be honest," said Buemi. "With the rain and the snow, it made it pretty tricky." For Alonso it was all about "being on the right tires at the right time".

The un-delayed Toyota gained a full lap over the chasing non-hybrid privateer pack by midway through the fourth hour. That was as far ahead as they got thanks to the stop-start nature of the event, which was brought to a premature end 11 minutes from the scheduled six-hour duration when the snow returned.

Rebellion Racing came out on top in the battle for the best of the rest spot over SMP Racing. The Rebellion-Gibson R-13 driven Gustavo Menezes, Thomas Laurent and Nathanael Berthon sealed second position in the closing stages from the SMP BR Engineering BR1 driven by Stoffel Vandoorne, Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov.

It had been nip and tuck for much of the way between the two independents, though a lack of fifth and sixth gears on the AER-engined BR1 in the latter stages of the race allowed the Rebellion to sneak home six seconds to the good.

The second SMP entry shared by Sergey Sirotkin, Stephane Sarrazin and Egor Orudzhev took fourth despite losing a wheel early in the race. Rebellion's second entry driven by Neel Jani, Andre Lotterer and Bruno Senna claimed fifth after a troubled race, though it was still two laps up on the delayed Toyota.

The Franco-American DragonSpeed squad took a maiden LMP2 victory in the WEC. Pastor Maldonado, who shared the team's ORECA-Gibson 07 with Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez, moved to the front in the penultimate hour ahead of the Signatech Alpine that had led much of the race. Signatech's ORECA driven by Nicolas Lapierre, Andre Negrao and Pierre Thiriet, ended up third behind the G-Drive trio of Jean-Eric Vergne, Roman Rusinov and Job van Uitert which would have needed a late splash-and-dash fuel stop but for the red flag.

Aston Martin won a thrilling GTE Pro battle, the marque's second victory of the season going to Vantage GTE shared by Maxime Martin and Alex Lynn. The Aston was competitive on both a dry and wet track and ended up prevailing by a scant eight tenths of second from the AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE shared by James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi.

Porsche took third position with Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen, who edged towards the GTE drivers' crown. The German marque also sealed the manufacturers' title with a race to spare.

Toyota also wrapped up the meaningless LMP1 teams' crown with its Spa results. Alonso and co did more or less the same as far as the drivers' title goes, and their in-house rivals know it.

"It's looking like the championship is gone," said Conway. "The sister car would more or less not have to not finish Le Mans, which is not something we want. But we will fight to the end and we see what Le Mans brings."
 

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