6 Hours of Sao Paulo Declared a Huge Success
The 6 Hours of Sao Paulo, Round 5 of the FIA World Endurance Championship held at the Interlagos circuit in Brazil was hailed a success by everyone involved after a great weekend of entertainment both on and off the track. The event, promoted by former F1 World Champion Emerson Fittipaldi in partnership with the City of Sao Paulo, attracted a race day crowd of 25,000 people who witnessed a historic first win for the Toyota TS030 hybrid, beating the Le Mans winning Audi R18 e-tron to the chequered flag.
Gerard Neveu, CEO of the FIA WEC, said: “I would like to thank Emerson Fittipaldi and the City of Sao Paulo for their hard work and dedication that has made the first running of the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo a huge success. The event attracted a large crowd of 25,000 and they saw first hand what the ‘Spirit of Le Mans’ means with great entertainment available to everyone of them throughout the day. We look forward to returning to Sao Paulo in 2013 on Saturday 31 August where the event will be even bigger and better.”
Emerson Fittipaldi said: “I am very excited about the result of the race and I think the Brazilian public accepted the Le Mans cars and they made the FIA World Endurance Championship very welcome in Sao Paulo. We had a great race and everybody at the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo had an enjoyable day. I have been receiving extremely positive comments, from people who have been racing for many, many years. Everybody is very happy to see the WEC and I think we have a great future in Brazil. We also launched a major road safety campaign this weekend in support of the FIAs Action for Road Safety. When Minister, Aguinaldo Ribeiro, waved the green flag to start the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo, he also waved the green flag to start the campaign whose main theme is Traffic Conscience – A pact for life.”
The next event on the FIA World Endurance Championship will be the 6 Hours of Bahrain on Saturday 29 September 2012. For more information visit www.fiawec.com
Jeff Carter