WEC: Webber/Bernhard/Hartley overcome penalty to win Lone Star Le Mans

Porsche drivers Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley came back from a one-minute stop-go penalty at Austin to claim a second consecutive World Endurance Championship victory. (Scroll down for video from the post-race winner's conference.)

Their Porsche 919 Hybrid had the edge over their sister car during the first half of the six-hour race and was over a half a minute clear when Webber overshot his pit. The resulting delay reduced the lead to approximately 10 seconds, which Bernhard extended to 13s when the car was given a one-minute stop-go for its pitlane misdemeanor.

That handed the initiative to the second Porsche shared by Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas, which looked set to take the victory until an electrical issue with 35 minutes to go. It was able to return to the track for one final lap and was classified down in 12th position.

The problems for the Porsche allowed the Audi R18 e-tron quattro of championship leaders Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler to take second position.

They had trailed the other Audi, shared by Lucas di Grassi, Oliver Jarvis and Loic Duval, which was also hit with a stop-go for a pitlane infringement.

Lotterer was then able to overtake di Grassi in the closing stages to seal the runner-up spot, albeit more than a minute down on the winner.

The #1 Toyota TS040 Hybrid of Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima was two laps down in fourth place on another day on which the Japanese manufacturer couldn't challenge the German marques. The sister car was crashed out by Mike Conway late in the third hour.

G-Drive Racing took LMP2 honors with the OAK-run Ligier-Nissan JSP2 of Sam Bird, Julien Canal and Roman Rusinov. It had come out on top in a battle with the KCMG ORECA-Nissan 05 and was on course for victory even before the chasing car driven by Nicolas Lapierre, Matt Howson and Richard Bradley was awarded a stop-go for a pitlane infringement in the final minutes.

Porsche dominated in GTE Pro on the way to a second one-two in a row. Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen took the win in their Manthey Porsche 911 RSR by just over seven seconds from teammates Frederic Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet after getting ahead courtesy of a faster penultimate pit stop.

The AF Corse-run Ferrari 458 Italia driven by Viktor Shaitar, Aleksey Basov and Andrea Bertolini took GTE Am honors for the third race in a row.

Originally on Autosport.com