The FIA World Endurance Championship reaches its 20th race this weekend with the Lone Star Le Mans weekend, the fourth round of the 2014 series.
Since the series announced itself to the world in March 2012 at the first ever race in Sebring there have been some interesting statistics and superlatives on the FIA WEC journey so far.
In the competing nations (by drivers) France leads the way with 72 drivers having taken part since the inception of the championship. Next comes Great Britian with 56 and then German racers, of which, 21 have competed.
This year’s Le Mans winners Marcel Fassler, Benoit Treluyer and Andre Lotterer have taken the most race wins with seven victories, while in the LMP2 class it is John Martin with most success. He has stood on the top step of the podium seven times. The LMGTE leader is Gimmi Bruni, who leads the way with eight successes.
By class, Audi (14wins), Oreca (9wins), Aston-Martin (10wins) and Ferrari (8 wins) are the most successful marques so far in the series history.
14 drivers have competed in every FIA WEC race run so far and will complete their 20th appearance this weekend. They are Julien Canal, Marcel Fassler, Tom Kristensen, Marc Lieb, Andre Lotterer, Luis-Perez Companc, Stefan Mucke, Nicolas Prost, Garbiele Roda, Christian Ried, Paolo Ruberti, Stephane Sarrazin, Benoit Treluyer and Darren Turner
The drivers with the most pole positions are in LMP1 - Alexander Wurz with five pole starts and John Martin in LMP2 with four. Gimmi Bruni has started from top spot in LMGTE four times while Nicki Thiim is tops of the qualifiers in the GTE AM division with the four poles he set, all in 2013
Since 2013, at races other than Le Mans, the grid is set by the fastest average time of two drivers. The drivers listed in this table are those setting the better time in the pole-winning car and not necessarily the fastest overall time.
Some more vital statistics from the first 19 rounds of the FIA WEC:
