Rebellion Racing LMP1 Privateer Champions - A special tribute

Rebellion Racing has been a staple of the FIA World Endurance Championship’s LMP1 privateer class from its inception, winning the FIA Endurance Trophy for Private LMP1 Teams every year since 2012. Following the announcement that the Anglo-Swiss outfit will switch to racing in LMP2 class next year, here are some of its finest moments in its LMP1 career to date.  

When the WEC was founded in 2012, Bart Hayden’s team immediately announced itself as the benchmark for all privateer teams by winning six out of eight races with its Toyota-powered Lola B12/60. Four of those victories came from Nicolas Prost and Neel Jani, who finished fourth in the inaugural Driver’s World Championship and added an excellent fourth-place outright at the Le Mans 24 Hours alongside F1 veteran Nick Heidfeld. The other two victories came with Andrea Belicchi and Harold Primat, who were joined by local driver Cheng Cong Fu in Shanghai. 

It set the tone for a highly impressive swansong for the Lola in 2013, as Prost – the most successful driver in the team’s WEC tenure, with 17 wins from 33 starts – and Mathias Beche scored the team’s first outright podium at Interlagos. Beche and Belicchi repeated the result in the washout at Fuji, which was awarded half points. The team’s second Privateers Trophy was duly forthcoming, but it was all change for 2014 as the new LMP1-L class was introduced for non-hybrid machinery.

Rebellion welcomed the new era by teaming up with ORECA to build the Rebellion R-One. It proved a potent combination and duly dominated, winning every race in 2014 to see off the challenge of the returning Kolles-Lotus team. Five wins and three second places were more than enough for Prost, Heidfeld and Beche to become the inaugural winners of the LMP1 Private Teams Drivers' Trophy, ahead of team-mates Belicchi, GP2 champion Fabio Leimer and Dominik Kraihamer.

After switching to AER engines, 2015 brought yet more success, with Daniel Abt and Alexandre Imperatori joining Kraihamer on the top step at Le Mans, before Beche and Prost found their form and delivered yet another clean sweep of teams and drivers titles. Victory at the final round for 18-year-old Mathéo Tuscher made Swiss driver the youngest class winner in WEC history.

Tuscher, Imperatori and Kraihamer began 2016 in a similar vein by winning the privateer class at Silverstone and Spa, on both occasions taking advantage of unreliability from the hybrid cars to finish on the outright podium in third. It was the first time Rebellion had achieved the feat in back to back races and meant the No. 13 crew sat a remarkable second in the outright points after two rounds. Formula E champion Nelson Piquet Jr. then became the 13^th different driver to register a class win with Rebellion, bringing home the team’s fourth privateer win at La Sarthe in five years alongside Heidfeld and Prost. 

Having extended its winning record to 31 class wins from 66 starts at the 6 Hours of Fuji, Rebellion’s proud record of winning every LMP1 Privateer title remains intact for another year. Whoever comes after them will have a big act to follow.

Rebellion By the Numbers:

36 races

65 starts - 29 Lola, 36 Rebellion

57 finishes - 3 retirements for Lola, 6 for Rebellion

30 class wins - 6 in 2012 (Lola), 6 in 2013 (Lola), 8 in 2014 (1 Lola, 7 Rebellion), 4 in 2015, 6 in 2016                        

Won the LMP1 Privateer Trophy each year

Points by year

2012, 205 points; Strakka Racing second at 148

2013, 173.5 points vs. 68 for Strakka's part season

2014, (points assigned to each car), No. 12 Rebellion 204 points; No. 13, 93 points; Lotus Racing, 33 points

2015, No 12, 134 points; No. 13, 108 points; ByKolles Racing, 104 points

Drivers Titles

2012-2013 – no title awarded to drivers

2014; Beche / Heidfeld / Prost, 209 points; Belicchi / Kraihamer / Leimer, 93 points

2015; Beche / Prost, 134 points; Imperatori / Kraihamer, 108 points; Kaffer / Trummer (ByKolles), 104 points