Audi made an impressive start to the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship season by topping the first two free practice sessions at Silverstone on Friday.
The German marque is bidding to reclaim the WEC crown in 2015 after losing to the Toyota of Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi last year, who will carry the no. 1 for the coming season.
After seeing Porsche set the pace at the pre-season prologue at Paul Ricard last month, Audi managed to respond by scoring a one-two in FP2 after going first and third in FP1 at Silverstone on Friday.
The Audi cars – carrying no. 7 and no. 8 in 2015 – shared P1, with Marcel Fassler, Benoit Treluyer and Andre Lotterer posting the fastest time of the day in the second session. Their lap of 1:41.526 was half a second clear of Porsche’s no. 17 in third place, whilst Toyota had to settle for P5 and P6 as Davidson and Buemi finished two seconds off the pace.
In LMP2, the G-Drive Racing cars dominated proceedings by going P1 and P2 in both sessions. The no. 28 of Gustavo Yacaman, Luis Felipe Derani and Ricardo Gonzalez had the upper hand in the intra-team battle on Friday, but is likely to face a stiff challenge from the sister no. 26 in qualifying tomorrow.
First blood in GTE Pro went to Aston Martin Racing as the no. 95 posted the fastest time of the day in FP1. However, Porsche hit back in FP2 as Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen led home Patrick Pilet and Frederic Makowiecki in the sister 911 RSR. With just 1.2 seconds separating all seven cars in the class in FP2, the fight for supremacy appears to be wide open at Silverstone.
The same can be said for GTE Am, where the Abu Dhabi Proton Racing Porsche of Christian Ried, Khaled Al Qubaisi and Klaus Bachler posted the fastest time of the day, finishing just eight-hundredths of a second clear of the no. 98 Aston Martin Racing that set the pace in the second session on Friday.
To see the complete results, click here. FP3 takes place at 9am local time at Silverstone on Saturday before qualifying at midday.
Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.
Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.
On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.
One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.
After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.
The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.
Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.
Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports
“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.
“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”
As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.
But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.
A block pass by Haiden Deegan led to a series of events that eventually led to Jordon Smith failing to make the Main. – Feld Motor Sports
“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.
“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”
Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.
“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.
“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”
The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.
