Toyota sweeps to one-two in Silverstone WEC opener

Toyota kicked off the new FIA World Endurance Championship with a dominant one-two finish at the 4 Hours of Silverstone, led by Jose Maria Lopez, Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway in the #7 car.

After taking pole on Saturday at Silverstone, the trio managed to score maximum points to start the season ahead of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley in the #8 Toyota.

Toyota led the early part of the race before slipping behind both Rebellion Racing entries under an early Full Course Yellow, but soon managed to restore control in LMP1.

The two cars battled for the lead entering the second half of the race with Hartley passing Kobayashi to put the #8 in front, only for a sluggish pit stop to hand the advantage back to the #7 car heading into the closing stages.

Lopez managed to bring the car home 1.9 seconds clear to give the #7 crew victory, with the #3 Rebellion R13 Gibson shared by Nathanael Berthon, Pipo Derani and Loic Duval completing the podium.

Cool Racing made a winning start to life in LMP2 with Nicolas Lapierre and Antonin Borga, who raced as a pair after Alexandre Coigny's withdrawal, while Porsche swept to a one-two finish in GTE-Pro led by Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz in the #91 Porsche 911 RSR. AF Corse took top honours in GTE-Am with Francois Perrodo, Emmanuel Collard and Nicklas Nielsen in the #83 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.