The #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley has won the second round of the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship, the 6 Hours of Portimao, after a dominant but not trouble-free run for the Toyota team.
The #7 Toyota, with Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi took the lead at the start, as Buemi slipped down to third after the #50 Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen overtook the Swiss driver.
Buemi soon got it back and the two Toyotas, now running 1-2, started to stretch their legs, building a gap to Nielsen and James Calado in the #51 Ferrari in fourth.
Buemi then caught Conway, closing a gap of around eight seconds to the Brit, and got by his teammate. However, drama then struck Conway and the #7 Toyota squad, as a driveshaft sensor needed to be fixed, with the FIA instructing Toyota to bring the car in to change the errant part. This dropped the car eight laps down, a deficit they would never recover, finishing ninth overall.
Out in front, the #8 Toyota had a gap of around 30 seconds to the #50 Ferrari. Hirakawa was now in the Toyota, with Nielsen being replaced by Miguel Molina.
While the Spaniard was initially able to keep tabs on Hirakawa with the gap remaining fairly constant amid regular traffic gains and losses, Hirakawa soon began to extend the gap. With two hours to go Hartley climbed in and put a lap on Antonio Fuoco, who’d also replaced Molina for the final two hours.
A safety car did briefly come out for a crash for the #4 Vanwall, which had 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villenueve at the wheel, as the car lost front braking capabilities, with the Canadian backing the car gently into wall with minor damage.
However, as Fuoco was already a lap down to Hartley, and with no unlapping in the WEC, this didn’t help Ferrari.
Half an hour later Hartley crossed the line to take the win, a lap ahead of Fuoco in the #50 Ferrari.
A minute and five seconds behind was the #6 Porsche 963, which had Andre Lotterer at the wheel to cross the line.
Laurens Vanthoor started the car and initially got by Calado for fourth at the start. Calado, in the faster car, soon re-passed him, and the Porsche mostly retained fifth behind the Toyotas and Ferraris for the next few hours.
However, the #51 Ferrari also had its own issues. With Antonio Giovinazzi at the wheel, the car started losing its front brakes, with the team needing to play with the brake-by-wire settings in order to keep the car going. Eventually they turned off the energy harvesting from the front brakes, meaning the car was struggling to regenerate energy.
The problem got progressively worse during the race, until Alessandro Pier Guidi went straight on into the hard standing run off towards the end of the race, as one of the front discs completely disintegrated. The car would finish sixth, dropping from fourth as it ran with very little front braking capabilities for the last 20 minutes, slowing the car significantly.
The #4 Cadillac of Richard Westbrook, Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber finished fourth after a largely trouble free run, but didn’t quite have the pace to match Porsche – a 180° turn around from at Sebring, where Cadillac had the legs.
Peugeot finished fifth with the #94 Peugeot of Loic Duval, Gustavo Menezes and Nico Muller. Unlike at Sebring the car had a trouble-free run, finishing two laps down on the winning Toyota, although the car couldn’t truly match its competition from Ferrari, Porsche, and Cadillac.
With the front brake-less #51 Ferrari sixth, the #93 Peugeot, of Mikkel Jensen, Paul di Resta and Jean-Eric Vergne, which started from the pits and lost a lap immediately, finished seventh in another decent run from Peugeot.
Romain Dumas, Olivier Pla and Ryan Briscoe finished eighth in the #708 Glickenhaus, which once again struggled for pace, finishing five laps down. The #7 Toyota was ninth, rounding out the Hypercars which crossed the line.
The #5 Porsche 963 did not finish as it suffered a terminal power steering issue, 33 laps down. The #4 Vanwall also DNF’d, with that front brake issue with Villenueve at the wheel.
In LMP2, United Autosports took a 1-2 finish, with the #22 Oreca 07-Gibson of Oliver Jarvis, Giedo van der Garde, and Joshua Pierson prevailing over their teammates, Phil Hanson, Frederick Lubin, and Ben Hanley in the sister #23 car.
However, both cars had a tight race with the #41 WRT Oreca-Gibson of Rui Andrade, Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz, plus the #63 Prema of Daniil Kvyat, Mirko Bortolotti and Doriane Pin.
The sister #31 WRT, with Sean Galael, took the lead at the start, but soon Hanley and van der Garde took the 1-2 positions. The team were strong throughout the race, and eventually the trio of Jarvis, van der Garde and Pierson prevailed, with Jarvis just 0.684 ahead of Hanson at the line.
Deletraz was a further four and a half seconds back in the #41 WRT, with Kvyat fourth in the #63 Prema and Antonio Felix da Costa fifth in the #48 JOTA, which won at Sebring back in March.
For the second race in a row, the #33 Corvette C8.R won, at the hands of Nicolas Varrone, Ben Keating, and Nicky Catsburg. They endured another close battle, this time with the #83 Richard Mille AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo of Alessio Rovera, Lilou Wadoux, and Luis Perez Companc, with Rovera and Catsburg fighting it out until they crossed the line, Catsburg prevailing by just 0.260.
In third was the #85 Iron Dames Porsche911 RSR-19 of Michelle Gatting, Sarah Bovy and Rahal Frey. The Dames traded the lead with Keating and co multiple times early on, but couldn’t keep up the pace with Catsburg and Rovera, with Gatting eventually finishing just over 24 seconds back.
