Saturday, November 9, 2013

Audi Wins, Márquez on Pole, Crafton's Title

The #1 Audi of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer may have won the penultimate round of the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship in Shanghai but it wasn't enough to stop their teammates Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Loïc Duval from clinching the title with a third place finish.

The win is the #1 Audi's third of the season, leveling them with their teammates however a fifth at Le Mans and a twenty-sixth at Fuji gave the #2 Audi the upper hand in the championship. The Toyota of Alexander Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre finished second after winning the Fuji round three weeks ago. The second Toyota of Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi and Stéphane Sarrazin retired after one-hundred and forty-three laps.

In LMP2, #26 G-Drive Racing team of John Martin, Mike Conway and Romain Rusanov picked up their third win in four races and sit third in the standings, 22.5 behind the class leading #35 OAK Racing team of Bertrand Baguette, Martin Plowman and Ricardo González. The #24 OAK Racing entry of Alex Brundle, David Heinemeier Hansson and Olivier Pla finish second in class, ahead of their teammates in the #35 and now trail the #35 by fifteen.

Stefan Mücke and Darren Turner are now GT points leaders as they won from pole position and led an Aston Martin 1-2 with their teammates Pedro Lamy, Bruno Senna and Richie Stanaway in-tow. The Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Pilet finished third in class. Mücke and Turner owned a 5.5 point lead over the Ferrari pairing of Giancarlo Fisichella and Gianmaria Bruni. Porsche drivers Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz are third in the standings, 15.5 back.

The American 8 Star Motorsports Ferrari 458 Italia won in GTE Am with drivers Enzo Potolicchio, Rui Águas and Davide Rigon ahead of the Porsche of Jean-Karl Vernay, Raymond Narac and Markus Palttala. The Aston Martin of Jamie Campbell-Walter, Stuart Hall and Jonathan Adam rounded out the podium.

Campbell-Walter and Hall owned a five point lead in GTE Am over Vernay and Narac and a nine point lead over Potolicchio and Águas.

The final round of the 2013 FIA World Endurance Championship will take place three weeks from today, November 30th from Bahrain.

Marc Márquez set the MotoGP track record at Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia with a lap of 1:30.237 seconds, over three-tenths faster than his championship rival Jorge Lorenzo in second. Lorenzo had broken the previous track record held by Dani Pedrosa on his first lap of qualifying. Pedrosa rounds out the front row for tomorrow's race. Valentino Rossi starts fourth on an all-Yamaha second row as he is joined by Tech3 teammates Cal Crutchlow and Bradley Smith. This is Crutchlow's final race for Tech3 as he will move to the factory Ducati team for 2014.

The customer Hondas of Álvaro Bautista and Stefan Brandl will start on row three along with Andrea Dovizioso. Nicky Hayden will start tenth in his final race for Ducati. He will be moving to the "open" class Aspar Racing Team for 2014. Italians Andrea Iannone and Danilo Petrucci round out row four.

In Moto3, the top three in the championship will start in the first three positions. Third in the championship, Álex Rins will start on pole ahead of points leader Luis Salom and second in points Maverick Viñales. Should they finish in the positions they are starting in, Rins would win the Moto3 title on tiebreaker over Salom. Both would have seven victories but Rins would win by having five second place finishes to Salom's three.

Fox Sports 1's coverage of the MotoGP season finale will be shown live at 8:00 a.m. ET while the Moto3 and Moto2 races can be seen tape-delayed at 3:00 p.m. ET and 4:00 p.m. ET respectively.

All Matt Crafton has to do to win the 2013 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship is start the final race at Homestead next Friday night. By finishing fifth, Crafton holds a forty-six point lead over second place Ty Dillon who finished fourth. Crafton has one win this season, coming back in the fourth round of the season at Kansas and three career Truck Series wins.

In the race, Erik Jones became the youngest winner in Truck Series history as he managed to lead 84 of the 150 laps. Jones was 17 years, five months and nine days old when he won last night. Ross Chastain finished second with Brendan Gaughan finishing third.