MOTORSPORT: Webber leads WEC

Mark Webber is joint leader of the drivers’ championship in the World Endurance Championship after a third straight win – with a little help from some friends and only by one point.

Webber and New Zealander Brendon Hartley and German Timo Bernhard won Sunday’s wet Fuji Six-Hour in Japan in a Porsche 919 Hybrid, but team orders were invoked at the finish to orchestrate the other factory Porsche handing the victory to them.

Webber started from pole position but the first 17 laps were completed behind the safety car because of the rain.

Once the field was let loose Webber was promptly off the track and dropped to fourth place.

In that first stint his car also lost boost because of a problem with its hybrid system and fell to fifth, behind the other Porsche 919 driven by Marc Lieb (Germany), Romain Dumas (France) and Neel Jani (Switzerland). But by the end of his second stint Webber was dicing with one of the Audi R18 e-tron quattros for second place, while the other Porsche had taken the lead.

Webber handed over to Hartley after 81 laps of the 4.549km circuit and sports car veteran Bernhard drove the final stint.

Jani in the other Porsche, number 18, slowed in the closing laps, giving up a 30sec lead to allow Bernhard in the number 17 to overtake because the German, Webber and Hartley have the best chance of taking the drivers’ title.

Two other six-hour races remain in the championship – at Shanghai in China on November 1 and Bahrain in the Middle East on November 21.

Bernhard took the chequered flag at Fuji 14sec clear and that has given Webber and his co-drivers a one-point lead over Audi trio Marcel Fassler (Swtizerland), Andre Lotterer (Germany) and Benoit Treluyer (France).

Audi also invoked team orders at the Fuji finish to allow those three to be classified third, but a lap down, while the other Audi ended up two laps down – as did the first of the Toyota TS040s in fifth. The other Toyota finished 13 laps down.

Webber said of this latest in his hat-trick of sports car victories: “It was the No. 8’s day today and they deserved the win, but it was decided to flip the position around at the end… So we owe them one in the future.

“My first stint was pretty tricky with very little grip. After the start I almost lost the car in turn three. [Then] Soon after a hybrid issue occurred, so we had lots of talk on the radio.

Porsche has now won four WEC races in a row – the Le Mans 24-Hour in June (with a third car driven by German F1 ace Nico Hulkenberg, New Zealand’s Earl Bamber and Britain’s Nick Tandy) and six-hour races at Nurburgring in Germany and Austin in Texas and now Fuji.

Its latest quinella extended its lead in the manufacturers’ standings to 53 points: 264 to Audi’s 211; with last year’s champion manufacturer Toyota languishing on 119.

Webber, Hartley and Bernhard have 129 points in the drivers’ championship to the 128 of Lotterer, Treluyer and Fassler.

The other full-time Porsche trio – Jani, Lieb and Dumas – have 95.5 points.

American actor Patrick Dempsey took his first WEC class victory in GTE Am at Fuji with his Dempsey Proton Porsche team.

The 911 RSR he shared with Patrick Long and German Marco Seefried claimed the win by 17sec from an Aston Martin Vantage GTE in which one of the drivers was Mathias Lauda, a son of Austrian triple Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda.

Bamber had chased down the Dempsey entry in the sister Proton Porsche 911 RSR but contact thwarted the Kiwi's challenge.

Dempsey, whose previous best was second in class at Le Mans this year, said his breakthrough victory was “a great feeling”.

"I drove a long first stint in pouring rain and then had to wait for hours,” Dempsey said.

“When I climbed back into the car shortly before the flag my main priority was not to make any mistakes.

“Everything came together today. Patrick [Long] gave me advice over the radio, Marco drove a fantastic stint and the team’s strategy was perfect.”