After six hours of hard racing in great weather conditions, the team of Sébastien Bourdais and Anthony Davidson (No 7 Peugeot 908) just won the 6 Hours of Zhuhai ahead of their team mates, Franck Montagny and Stéphane Sarrazin (No 8 Peugeot 908). The No 1 Audi of Timo Bernhard and Marcel Fassler took third spot on the podium.

The 2011 ILMC season was dominated by Peugeot, winning the season opener at Sebring (Oreca 908 HDi FAP) and using the all-new 908 prototype to wins five more races, against a single one for the Audi R18. And what a great race and win that was: the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Adding the race distances covered by the winners of each race, we come up with surprising numbers: Peugeot led for 4878 km and Audi for 4838 km!

Here in Zhuhai, the Peugeot 908/MICHELIN cars dominated throughout practice, qualifying and the race. The No 1 Fassler/Bernhard Audi did lead during the first hour, but Stéphane Sarrazin and co-driver Anthony Davidson took control of the race before the mid-point and kept it to the end.

The No 2 McNish/Kristensen Audi did not finish due to electrical problems, after a few on-track incidents early in the race had taken it out of contention for the win.

The race-long fight between the leading “petrol” cars, the No 24 OAK Racing Pescarolo and the No 12 Rebellion Lola-Toyota was only resolved in the last laps, despite the Lola-Toyota losing two minutes after an on-track incident. Thanks to triple stinting their tires, the Prost/Jani Lola-Toyota/MICHELIN took the lead right at the end of the race and just missed out on a podium finish.

In LM GTE Pro, the factory BMW M3s scored their own 1 – 2 finish, giving BMW the 2011 ILMC manufacturer and team titles for that class. The No 59 Ferrari tried hard but could not match the pace of the BMWs, while the always competitive No 51 Ferrari fell victim to wheel hub problems in the early part of the race.

The No 63 Porsche/MICHELIN won in LM GTE Am, and the No 98 Audi/MICHELIN took final honours in GTC, as did the No 26 Oreca-Nissan in LMP2.

6 hours of Zhuhai 2011, BMW M3, Lola-Toyota, Michelin, Oreca-Nissan, Peugeot, Porsche