Porsche claims first WEC win

The winning No. 14 Porsche

Porsche has claimed its first overall victory in the FIA World Endurance Championship following an action-packed and incident-filled season-ending Six Hours of Sao Paulo.

Neel Jani took the No. 14 Porsche 919 Hybrid to victory lane but the win was tainted. The race that ended under the safety car following a heavy crash by teammate Mark Webber in the final 30 minutes of the race with the 2nd place Toyota on newer tires and closing.

Webber escaped serious injury in the high-speed impact, which also collected a GTE-Am class Ferrari, although the track was unable to be fully cleaned for the race to restart.

Aside from the late-race crash, Porsche enjoyed a breakout race, with the No. 20 car of Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard leading the opening hours.

A slow track cleanup handed the No. 14 Porsche a sure victory under caution

However, an intense battle for the lead developed between all six of the factory LMP1-H entries through the middle stages, with Toyota and Audi also enjoying time out front.

The key, however, came with the No. 14 Porsche's ability to double stint tires, which helped put Jani and co-drivers Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb out front, despite getting off sequence early due to a puncture.

Jani held a 14-second gap over the No. 8 Toyota TS040 Hybrid of Anthony Davidson prior to the race-ending safety car with 28 minutes remaining on the clock.

Jani said: "I was part of the first pole for Porsche on its comeback and now the first win, so I am very proud – this is what I was dreaming of when I joined."

He was confident that he would have been able to win the race had not the safety car been called.

"It was looking OK," he added, "when I was in free air I could do good times."

Nine-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Tom Kristensen finished his career with a podium aboard the #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro he shared with Lucas di Grassi and Loic Duval.

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