The World Endurance Championship has been running since 2012 and being a motorsport fan since 2008, it’s a shame that I’ve never watched a race of this series. Today I finally got the chance to watch a WEC race for some time and I was amazed.
A World Endurance Championship race is typically 6 hours long (except 24 Hours Of Le Mans) and over 20 teams divided into 4 categories go head to head. Every team typically has 2 cars (sometimes more or less), each of which is driven by a team of 3 drivers. The four categories of this series are LMP1, LMP2, LMGTE Pro and finally LMGTE Am.
The start was fun with an LMP2 car spinning and hitting an LMGTE Pro Aston Martin. There was a lot of tyre wear around the track with the marbles visible around the 1 hour mark. Of course I didn’t watch the whole race but before stopping, I saw something that put a smile on my face.
The LMP1 Porsche #2 of Marc Lieb and LMP1 Toyota #6 of Kamui Kobayashi were in a hot battle for one of the podium spots and what a fight that was. Since there were marbles around the racing line none of the drivers wanted to go off-line. These two constantly exchanged positions and their cars’ hybrid power came to great use while doing so.
While battling, they had to encounter a lot of traffic. All of this resulted in a treat for the fans. Such kind of racing is what Formula One fans have been missing from the past few years and it can lure a lot of fans to this longer format of racing. After watching this race, I can proudly say that I’m a WEC fan!
