A win for the No.7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José Maria Lopez was no big surprise.

The relative ease they achieved this, ahead of the sister No. 8 car, as well as the Rebellions and Ginettas, somewhat was.

At the Prologue, the non-hybrids could approach the Toyota hybrids by three to five tenths of a second. Even in qualifying for the four-hour race, the gap was still only half a second.

But, when the lights went out, the competition were no match for the Japanese manufacturer.

Toyota lost the lead due to an unlucky full course yellow in the first phase of the race, but later flew passed the leading Rebellions effortlessly.

The gap slightly shrank when the rain started to fall, but this was mostly due to the Toyota’s stopping later than the others.

In the pits, the No. 8 took over the lead from the No.7, and together, they quickly opened a considerable gap to the Rebellion No. 3.

At the next series of pit stops the lead switched back to the No. 7 again.

Brendon Hartley made his Toyota debut in the No. 8 car, and managed to close up to Kobayashi and pass him for the lead.

However, a slow last stop for Hartley gifted the lead back to Kobayashi. Subsequently, Hartley, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima had to settle for second place.

Rebellion Drop to One-Car Entry

The No.3 Rebellion of Nathanael Berthon, Pipo Derani and Loic Duval took up the last podium spot.

After the race, Rebellion Racing confirmed that they will  not enter a second car on a full-time basis.

Instead, the Swiss outfit will only enter two cars for the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2020.

Team LNT & Ginetta Off The Pace

Further back, the Ginettas struggled to play a role in the race.

In their debut race Team LNT suffered from a loose wheel bearing in the opening stages. Additionally, they experienced further technical issues and a spin for the No. 6, after contact with the GT Pro Ferrari of Miguel Molina, ending the race of the latter.

There’s much to improve over the season, as the gap in qualifying was also considerable at 1.2 seconds off the pace.

It remains to be seen if the new success handicaps that come into play this year can level the playing field.

By limiting, among others, fuel flow, fuel rig flow and minimum weight, the Toyota’s should be significantly slower at the next WEC race at Fuji.

Aston Martin No.97 car of Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin, came pretty close and was only 2.4 seconds of the second Porsche.

Racing Team Nederland enjoyed immediate success from their switch to the Oreca chassis and managed pole position on its debut.

They also led most of the first three hours, only to lose the lead to Cool Racing’s Nico Lapierre in the last hour.

A failure in second gear also lost them second place to the #36 Signatech car on the final lap. Despite their mechanical woes, the trio of Job van Uitert, Giedo van der Garde and Frits van Eerd held onto third.

Lapierre and Antonin Borga went on to win the race on Cool Racing’s LMP2 debut.

World Champions Signatech with their new driver line-up Andre Negrão, Pierre Ragues and Thomas Laurent took second.

The race was close as expected, with ten seconds seperated second and fifth places at the finish.

United Autosports didn’t have a successful race, as an electrical issue that forced them to retire after two laps. Both Jota-run cars weren’t far off the podium, missing out by a mere seven seconds.