Rebellion Knocks Out Jackie Chan

Rebellion Knocks Out Jackie Chan

- Gary Watkins

TWO TEAMS STOOD HEAD AND shoulders above the rest in the battle for the championship in the new era of more powerful and faster LMP2 machinery. Rebellion and the Jackie Chan DC Racing squad run by Jota shared out the victories in seven of the nine races over a closely fought title battle that was still raging deep into the Bahrain finale.

Rebellion, which like Chan DC and all the other P2 WEC entrants ran the ORECA 07 chassis with the spec Gibson V8, had the momentum over the second half of the season, the best of its two cars – shared by Bruno Senna, Julien Canal and Nicolas Prost – winning three times in the four races leading up to Bahrain. That allowed them to overhaul the points lead that the Chan DC trio of Oliver Jarvis, Ho-Pin Tung and Thomas Laurent had held since making a flying start with victory at the Silverstone opener in April.

But it looked like the pendulum was going to swing back the other way at the day-night series curtain closer. Jarvis and his team-mates had the speed to take a fourth victory of the season, only for a fuel-pick-up problem to intervene, forcing them to make an extra pitstop and hand both the race win and the class title to Rebellion. Senna and Canal were crowned champions, though without Prost, who had missed the Nurburgring race courtesy of the clashing Formula E fixture in New York.