Toyota Gazoo Racing took its second consecutive 1-2 finish at round five of the FIA World Endurance Championship, with the #7 car claiming victory at the 6 Hours of Shanghai after a challenging race held in wet conditions.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José Maria Lopez took the chequered flag to register back-to-back victories after their Fuji success last month.
The #8 Toyota driven by Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sébastien Buemi claimed second after losing time midway through the race under a Safety Car.
The race saw two lengthy red flags in the opening half as heavy rain hit the circuit and it wasn't until the fourth hour that conditions improved sufficiently for some proper green flag racing.
Despite a mixed order at the restart, Toyota quickly asserted its dominance over the non-hybrid cars to move to the front of the pack with the #8 car leading the sister TS050 Hybrid, but the order swapped as the #7 car benefitted by stopping as the cars were being led through the pitlane, before the #8 lost further time to a red light at the end of the pitlane when Alonso took over from Buemi.
That gap continued to grow before Nakajima's stint when he closed down on Conway before a final Safety Car period with just 20 minutes of the race remaining. As the track went green again, the two remained in order until the chequered flag, with 1.4 seconds splitting the duo.
Rounding out the podium, for the first time this year, was the #11 SMP Racing BR1-AER of Jenson Button, Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin, a lap down on the Toyotas.
Aston Martin took a first win in LMGTE Pro for the new model Vantage as Nicki Thiim and Marco Sørensen triumphed after a tense battle throughout the race with Porsche and BMW.
LMP2 saw a famous and popular home victory for the No.38 Jackie Chan DC Racing trio of Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry and Stéphane Richelmi.
The No.77 Dempsey Proton Porsche took its third LMGTE Am victory of the season as Matt Campbell, Julien Andlauer and Christian Ried triumphed.
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