WEC Austin: Rebellion seizes the opportunity 🎥

The highlights of the fifth round of the season-spanning World Championship at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin/Texas (USA) show that the Rebellion-Gibson set the pace right from the start.

Rebellion Racing took advantage of the stricter regulations, which limit the performance of Toyota Gazoo Racing's works cars, for the second time in impressive style. After setting a clear best time in practice, more than 1.6 seconds ahead of the two Toyota TS050 Hybrids, the Rebellion R13-Gibson of Bruno Senna, Norman Nato and Gustavo Menezes also took a commanding lead over the entire distance. It was the second win of the season for the team from England, which runs under the Swiss flag, after Race 3 in Shanghai.

After Toyota had fought back in Bahrain in December, the six works drivers were unable to make up for the handicap of the additional success ballast imposed on them, despite faultless work on the track and by the mechanics in the pits. Toyota only achieved a total of eight leading laps due to the different refueling intervals.

Rebellion reorients itself
Ten days earlier, Lausanne industrialist Alexandre Pesci, whose watch company lends its name to the team, announced his withdrawal from this scene. Rebellion had raised its profile enormously and now wanted to change its direction.

Rebellion has been involved since 2006 and has given many Swiss racing drivers a chance since then. After the 24 Hours of Le Mans next June, it's over. Before that, the races in Sebring in March and Spa in April are still on the program.

That was as good as it got for Buemi & Co.
Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley brought their Toyota home in second place, 51.5 seconds behind the leader. Their teammates Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López, who were even more heavily laden due to their victory in Bahrain, lost a full two laps.

In the championship standings, the trio with the Vaud native is now only five points behind the second Toyota team. In the team standings, Rebellion reduced the gap to the defending champions to 33 points.

Sébastien Buemi: "We made the best of our situation. Congratulations to Rebellion, we didn't have the pace to beat them. It was a lonely race for us, as there was no fight with our team-mates, who suffered from the extra weight. Somehow a strange race..."

Only 4th place after pole position for Cool Racing
With the Oreca from Cool Racing, a Swiss car also had the best grid position in the LMP2 class. Nicolas Lapierre from French-speaking Switzerland and the two Frenchmen Alexandre Coigny and Antonin Borga had to settle for a thankless fourth place, 19 seconds behind third place.

Classification 6 hours Austin

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