Silverstone Foul – Toyota Gazoo Racing Hands Rebellion a Win

Toyota Gazoo Racing has lost its one-two victory in the 6 Hours of Silverstone following a post-race technical inspection. At the end of the 6 Hours of Silverstone, the race was won by the No.8 Toyota TS050 HYBRID of Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima . Number Two was the No.7 Toyota TS050 HYBRID. Both cars were disqualified from the results.

The two Toyotas were found to be in non-conformity of Article 3.5.6.d of the 2018 LMP1-H Technical Regulations which covers the deflection of the skid block. Toyota intends to appeal the Decisions and therefore the race results remain provisional.

Following the outcome of Stewards’ Decisions,  the No.3 Rebellion Racing R13 Gibson of Gustavo Menezes, Thomas Laurent and Mathias Beche were elevated to first position in the final result, with the No.1 sister Rebellion of Neel Jani and André Lotterer claiming second position and the No.17 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1-AER of Stéphane Sarrazin and Egor Orudzhev in third place. The sister Russian-entered car of home hero Jenson Button, Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov unfortunately retired in the first hour with a technical problem.

Both Toyota cars -#8 TS050 HYBRID and #7  – suffered damage to their front floor areas during the race due to impacts against the new curbs at Silverstone. This also caused both cars to fail deflection tests in post-race scrutineering. As a result, race stewards disqualified both cars. The design and construction of the part concerned has not changed since its introduction at the beginning of the 2017 season. Since then it has successfully passed similar tests, most recently at Spa this season.

A  crowd of 60,240 fans saw racing over the weekend at Silverstone as the technically advanced sportscars put on what the FIA calls a thrilling show. Hard Luck Toyota will be looking to bounce back for the fourth round of the WEC Super Season, the 6 Hours of Fuji, at Fuji Speedway on 14th October.