Toyota GAZOO Racing’s Kamui Kobayashi was able to hold off a hot challenge in the final laps from Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Kevin Estre to win the FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of Imola along with teammates Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries. It is the team’s second straight victory in Italy.
“The team made a great decision. I just tried to not mess [it] up,” Kobayashi stated after the race. “The track was constantly changing, and to be on a constantly changing track, I had a lot of pressure from [Estre]. I made no mistakes and managed to [keep] us up front.”
The margin of victory was 7.081 seconds over Estre, Andre Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor. It was really 2.081 seconds on the road, but the team was assessed a five-second penalty for an illegal pass during a safety car period.
The No. 5 Porsche of Matt Campbell, Michael Christensen and Frederic Makowiecki was third, followed by Ferrari AF Corse’s Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen after Fuoco made a last lap pass. The No. 8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa were fifth.
The start of the race was very eventful. Nielsen led the field to green, but chaos broke out multiple times on the first lap.
First, Manthey EMA’s Yasser Shahin had contact with Iron Dames’ Sarah Bovy on the pit straight and spun into the wall. Shahin would continue, but was blamed for the incident and had to serve a one minutes stop-and-go penalty. He would ultimately finish 16 laps behind the LMGT3 class winners.
Shortly afterwards, Isotta Fraschini’s Jean-Karl Vernay got in the back of Peugeot TotalEnergies’ Paul di Resta. This created a stack up that involved Signatech Alpine’s Charles Milesi and Matthieu Vaxiviere, along with BMW M Team WRT’s Marco Wittmann.
Everyone was able to drive away from the second incident except for Wittmann, who got stuck in the gravel at Tamburello. The duel crashes brought out the safety car. Both Vaxiviere and Wittmann ended up in the garage and laps down.
The weather ultimately determined the outcome of the race. Just after halfway, it began to rain, but it never fully covered the entire track. The conditions were most in the third sector of the track, especially around the Rivazza complex. However, the other side of the track was bone dry.
Ferrari AF Corse’s Ferrari 499Ps were leading at the time and chose to gamble on staying on slicks. Meanwhile, Toyota GAZOO Racing, Porsche Penske…
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