The trio, who won the 2014 Le Mans 24 Hour race earlier this year, crossed the finish line 53.016 seconds ahead of the #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro driven by Tom Kristensen, Lucas Di Grassi and Loic Duval.
The six-hour endurance race around the 20-turn, 3.4-mile road-course circuit was interrupted for 55 minutes about an hour and a half into the event when heavy rain pounded the track sending many of the cars skating off the circuit. Standing water on the track forced officials to red flag the event.
Then the race was restarted around 7:55 p.m., the 29-car field battled under the track’s lights, which marked the first time since COTA opened in late 2012 that a race was held at night. Despite thunderstorms throughout the weekend, 50,334 fans attended the two-day event, which was a 33-percent increase over last year’s attendance.
Rounding out the podium was the pole sitting #8 Toyota TS 040-Hybrid, driven by Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Nicolas Lapierre.
In the LMP1-L division, Nicolas Prost, Nick Heidfeld and Mathias Beche in the No. 12 Rebellion Racing Toyota won easily after a near flawless run.
Christophe Bouchut, James Rossiter and Lucas Auer finished second in the No. Lotus while Rebellion Racing’s sister car driven by Dominik Kraihamer, Andrea Belicchi and Fabio Leimer took third after retiring the car during the final hour.
In the LMP2 class, the race featured a four-car duel between five of the class’ cars, which ended up being the most intensive battle of the night in all classes.
Richard Bradley, Matt Howson and Tsugio Matsuda finally prevailed after bringing their No. 47 KCMG Oreca-Nissan to the checkered flag. Russian drivers Nicolas Minassian, Maurizio Mediani and Sergey Zlobin in the No. 27 Oreca 03R Nissan finished in second and the trio of Scott Sharp, Ryan Dalziel and Ed Brown completed the podium in the HPD ARX 038-Honda
Aston Martin Racing’s No.97 Vantage V8 of Darren Turner and Stefan Mücke won the LMGTE Pro class for the first time this year after a hard-fought battle with the Porsche teams while the trio of Paul Dalla, Pedro Lamy and Christoffer Nygaard rook the win in the No. 98 Vantage V8 in the LMGTE Am division.