It was the first victory for the crew of the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid since last year’s Shanghai race, as the trio led home the #8 Audi of Lucas di Grassi, Oliver Jarvis and Loic Duval by 53.7 seconds.

The sister #7 R18 e-tron quattro of Andre Lotterer and Marcel Fassler completed the top three, just a further 0.6s back to round off a double podium finish for Audi.

For the majority of the race, sister brands Porsche and Audi appeared evenly matched for pace, but the latter suffered a significant drop-off in pace towards the end of the six-hour slugfest.

The #7 Audi also suffered a delay when it had to change the front bodywork in the fifth hour, although this allowed Lotterer to close down the sister machine before holding station in third.

In the hands of Fassler, the #7 Audi led for much of the first hour before the #1 Porsche took the lead as Bernhard stretched his opening stint two laps longer than the Swiss, who had up to that stage repelled the German’s advances in a tense lead fight.

Taking over from Bernhard, Hartley had a small setback in the #1 with a slow puncture that put the car off-sequence until the second Full Course Yellow of the race, which came in the third hour to allow marshals to clear debris.

The timing of the caution period played straight into the hands into the #2 Porsche crew of Marc Lieb, Romain Dumas and Neel Jani, who pitted during the FCY and rejoined with a cushion of 10 seconds over the #1 car, which stopped under green-flag conditions along with both Audis.

But the points-leading trio fell out of victory contention in an incident with a GTE Porsche towards the end of the penultimate hour, as Lieb earned the #2 crew a drive-through penalty for hitting Khaled Al-Qubaisi in the #88 Proton-run car at Turn 6.

Lieb was able to get the car back to the pits to hand over to Neel Jani, who served the drive-through before sustaining damage during a fierce battle with Lotterer for third.

That resulted in another unscheduled visit to the pits to repair the left-rear bodywork, Jani bringing the points-leading #2 machine home in fourth place, 1m37s down on the winning #1 car.

Toyota ended up a distant fifth and sixth, suffering problems with both cars, but lacking the frontrunning pace of their German rivals.

The #5 TS050 Hybrid of Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima was a lapped fifth, three laps ahead of the #6 of Stephane Sarrazin, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, who lost five minutes with a loose engine part.

Seventh overall was the only one of the three LMP1-L entries to be running at the flag, the #13 Rebellion R-One of Alexandre Imperatori, Matheo Tuscher and Dominik Kraihamer recovering from a brake problem to win the sub-class.

Both of the trio’s competitors, the #12 Rebellion and the #4 ByKolles CLM, succumbed to engine issues.

Signatech wins in LMP2 again

The LMP2 class was won by the #36 Signature Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre, Gustavo Menezes and Stephane Richelmi, adding to their victories at Spa and Le Mans.

It had been the #26 G-Drive Oreca of Rene Rast, Roman Rusinov and Alex Brundle that dominated until encountering what turned out to be a terminal gearbox problem in the third hour.

That handed the advantage to the #42 Strakka Gibson, which gradually faded from contention when newcomer Lewis Williamson handed over the car to Nick Leventis.

At this stage, the Signatech crew assumed a lead they would maintain to the finish, although the French squad came under pressure from the #43 RGR Sport Ligier of Bruno Senna, Filipe Albuquerque and Ricardo Gonzalez in the latter half of the race.

Despite a late off for Senna, the Mexican-entered car finished 16s adrift in second, while third place went to the #31 ESM Ligier of Pipo Derani, Chris Cumming and Ryan Dalziel, who held off the resurgent Strakka – in Jonny Kane's hands – by just 0.071s at the finish.

Manor lost a chance of a potential podium for the #45 car of Matt Howson, Richard Bradley and Roberto Merhi due to a brake disc failure in the final hour.

Ferrari takes 1-2 in GTE battle

Gianmaria Bruni and James Calado scored their first GTE Pro win of the year in the #51 AF Corse Ferrari, leading home a one-two finish for the Italian marque as Sam Bird and Davide Rigon brought home the #71 car in second.

Bruni took the lead away from the #95 Aston Martin of Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorenson in the fourth hour, the Danish duo having controlled the race up until that point.

They then suffered the misfortune of a poorly timed caution period that allowed the #71 Ferrari and the #66 Ford to pass, although a late drive-through penalty for the American car driven by Olivier Pla and Stefan Mucke, for a driver loosening his seatbelts too early in a pitstop, ensured that Thiim and Sorenson took third.

The sister #97 Aston Martin of Darren Turner and Richie Stanaway dropped away from the lead fight after having to replace a door in the first hour, while Ford's #67 entry was engulfed by a pit fire as Harry Tincknell attempted to swap over to Andy Priaulx in the second hour.

Aston Martin meanwhile took honours in GTE Am with the #98 machine of Pedro Lamy, Mathias Lauda and Paul Dalla Lana, 25 seconds up on the #78 KCMG Porsche.

UPDATE: The KCMG Porsche was later excluded from the results for a ride height infringement, handing second in the GTE Am class to the #83 AF Corse Ferrari.

Cla	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Gap
1	1	Mark Webber   Timo Bernhard   Brendon Hartley	Porsche 919 Hybrid	LMP1	194
2	8	Lucas di Grassi   Loic Duval   Oliver Jarvis	Audi R18	LMP1	194	53.787
3	7	Andre Lotterer   Marcel Fassler	Audi R18	LMP1	194	54.483
4	2	Romain Dumas   Neel Jani   Marc Lieb	Porsche 919 Hybrid	LMP1	194	1'37.324
5	5	Anthony Davidson   Kazuki Nakajima   Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	193	1 lap
6	6	Stéphane Sarrazin   Kamui Kobayashi   Mike Conway	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	190	4 laps
7	13	Alexandre Imperatori   Dominik Kraihamer   Matheo Tuscher	Rebellion R-One	LMP1	178	16 laps
8	36	Nicolas Lapierre   Gustavo Menezes   Stéphane Richelmi	Alpine A460	LMP2	178	36.256
9	43	Bruno Senna   Ricardo Gonzalez   Filipe Albuquerque	Ligier JS P2	LMP2	178	52.734
10	31	Pipo Derani   Ryan Dalziel   Chris Cumming	Ligier JS P2	LMP2	176	18 laps
11	42	Nick Leventis   Jonny Kane   Lewis Williamson	Gibson 015S	LMP2	176	0.071
12	44	Antonio Pizzonia   Matthew Howson   Tor Graves	Oreca 05	LMP2	176	17.836
13	37	Vitaly Petrov   Viktor Shaytar   Kirill Ladygin	BR01	LMP2	175	19 laps
14	35	Nelson Panciatici   Ho-Pin Tung   David Cheng	Alpine A460	LMP2	175	28.842
15	27	Maurizio Mediani   David Markozov   Nicolas Minassian	BR01	LMP2	175	1'06.488
16	30	Scott Sharp   Ed Brown   Johannes van Overbeek	Ligier JS P2	LMP2	172	22 laps
17	12	Nick Heidfeld   Nicolas Prost   Mathias Beche	Rebellion R-One	LMP1	171	23 laps
18	51	Gianmaria Bruni   James Calado	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE PRO	170	24 laps
19	71	Sam Bird   Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE PRO	170	29.730
20	95	Marco Sorensen   Nicki Thiim	Aston Martin Vantage V8	LMGTE PRO	170	47.394
21	66	Stefan Mücke   Olivier Pla	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	169	25 laps
22	97	Darren Turner   Richie Stanaway	Aston Martin Vantage V8	LMGTE PRO	169	44.003
23	77	Richard Lietz   Michael Christensen	Porsche 911 RSR (2016)	LMGTE PRO	169	1'11.303
24	98	Pedro Lamy   Paul Dalla Lana   Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage V8	LMGTE AM	166	28 laps
25	83	François Perrodo   Emmanuel Collard   Rui Aguas	Ferrari F458 Italia	LMGTE AM	166	1'02.201
26	50	Paolo Ruberti   Pierre Ragues   Yutaka Yamagishi	Chevrolet Corvette C7-Z06	LMGTE AM	165	29 laps
27	88	David Heinemeier Hansson   Patrick Long   Khaled Al Qubaisi	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	164	30 laps
28	86	Michael Wainwright   Adam Carroll   Ben Barker	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	164	1'16.498
29	67	Harry Tincknell   Andy Priaulx   Marino Franchitti	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	155	39 laps
30	45	Roberto Merhi   Richard Bradley   Matthew Rao	Oreca 05	LMP2	149	45 laps
31	4	Simon Trummer   Oliver Webb   Pierre Kaffer	CLM P1/01	LMP1	98	96 laps
32	26	Roman Rusinov   René Rast   Alex Brundle	Oreca 05	LMP2	74	120 laps