Roman Rusinov, Mike Conway and John Martin converted pole position into a win today at the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Six Hours Of Circuit of the Americas, a repeat performance of the last event in Brazil. The G-Drive Racing team qualified the Oreca Nissan by an impressive one-second margin in the four lap/two driver average system, with an individual fastest lap time of 1:54.656. That time was bettered still in the race with a further tenth of a second reducing the time to 1:54.559 on the fastest lap of the race.

The G-Drive squad didn’t have its own way for the whole race; the #24 and #35 Oak Racing Morgans leap-frogged the Oreca during the first pit stops, going on to do battle between themselves perhaps a little too hard. An altercation led to both cars needing attention and from that point, just after the 2 hour 30 minute mark, there was no looking back for G-Drive who crossed the line over a lap ahead of the next LMP2 car.

The #32 Lotus made its first podium appearance of the year, the first for the Lotus T128, in third place. Having started eighth in class the team drove consistently and stayed out of trouble to climb through the ranks.

The 2014 WEC calendar was revealed this weekend with the same venues and similar timings to this season.

Mike McGregor, Service Engineer: “The track was fairly easy on tyres and as we expected has a smooth low grip surface. It changed throughout the weekend, especially as there was no dry running on Friday for the practice sessions with rain easing off on Saturday. Then during the race it was dry and very hot with ambient temperature reaching 32 degrees and the track getting to 50 degrees centigrade. Throughout the teams were reporting that they were impressed with the tyre performance which was good. We now have more data for this circuit to help with designs for the 2014 tyres.

“From the start of the race our teams were able to double stint if they wished and the times were consistent. The fastest laps were set on tyres over 40 laps old. The #26 G-Drive car ran very well, as did the Lotus which took its first podium of the year. It was a shame that the Oak Racing cars had trouble but I’m sure we’ll see them back on form in Japan.”