Fans of the World Endurance Championship do not have much longer to wait until the next instalment (round 4) of the 2015 season. If Porsche’s win at Le Mans seems a long time ago, then surely so do the wins at Spa and Silverstone for Audi, and even more so the 2014 World Championship that was claimed by Toyota drivers Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi.

However, to stand still in motor racing is to go backwards and although the ten-week gap in the calendar will have been used by many for some rest and relaxation, engineers in Cologne, Ingolstadt and Weissach will have been busy finding improvements to their mighty LMP1 cars. Whether those improvements will be enough to change the overall pecking order remains to be seen of course.

It is certainly likely, as at Le Mans, to be a race between Porsche and Audi, with Porsche’s pace over a single lap being pitted against the consistency of the Audis. Unless more than one of their cars run into trouble, it is hard to see how Toyota could repeat their podium result of Silverstone.

All three manufacturers can claim the race as their home, indeed the distance to the Nürburgring is somewhat less from Cologne, the home of TMG, than it is from Stuttgart. But has Toyota a realistic chance? Not according to Anthony Davidson, with whom I spoke earlier this week.

“We’ve made a small step since Le Mans,” said the reigning World Endurance Champion. “It’s not a huge step. But we had a good test at the Nürburgring last month, it was good to go there. I got to drive the car in both wet and dry conditions, which I’m sure will be useful practice for the race, knowing what can happen at that place!”

Doesn’t he find it frustrating, with Porsche and Audi being so far ahead? “There was a point at Spa-Francorchamps, yes, when it was mildly frustrating,” says Davidson. “I think the drivers could feel what was going on a bit sooner than some of the team, but now we are all focussed on making a big step with the 2016 car. As a team, we all want the same thing, we all know the plan! We got left behind this year. But next year, hopefully, we’ll be the ones to beat.”

Not that Toyota as a team, nor Anthony Davidson in particular, is going to stop trying this year. “We’ve really wrung every bit of performance out of the car,” he says. “Some of the improvements came from the tyres, Michelin has made improvements in the technology. And I’ve really learnt this year how to use the hybrid power, how to keep the thing ticking along at maximum output. We’ve learnt so much about this package, that we’re really on top of it now. That will help us to make the developments we need next year, for the 2016 car.”

The five races that remain this year can therefore be expected to serve up an intense confrontation between Audi and Porsche. Some of Porsche’s speed advantage has been pegged back by the revisions to the EoT formula, (described in detail here) but remember too that Audi (at least the Lotterer/Tréluyer/Fässler car) has only one engine with which to complete the whole of the rest of the season, following its problems with the engine seals at Le Mans.

Porsche arrives at the Nürburgring with a new, high-downforce aero package for the 919 Hybrid. The car has tested, briefly, but Friday’s Free Practice will be the first opportunity for the engineers to see how well it works. Higher downforce means less tyre wear and that should mean that, even though the regulations have been clarified to allow teams to use eight sets of tyres for qualifying and the race, Porsche will be considering to double-stint tyres during the six hours.

“This is the part of the season when you need drivers who can think,” said a team insider this week. “It’s no use being quick if you’re not thinking about the bigger picture. More than half the 2015 WEC points are still up for grabs and no-one cares about the individual races. With Le Mans behind us, it’s all about points now, either for the manufacturers’ championship or the drivers’. Winning races is important, but from now on, it’s secondary to the Championship.”

At Le Mans, Porsche managed to save around 4-5 seconds at each pit stop. Partly this was due to the fact that they were putting less fuel in, but that doesn’t explain all of the time gained. Race Engineer Kyle Wilson-Clarke was tight-lipped on the matter when I mentioned it to him: “There’s no single thing, it’s the ability of the drivers, the re-fuellers and the tyre-changers all being efficient and optimising their procedures,” was all he would tell me. Whatever the full explanation is, Porsche has raised the standard of pit-stop efficiency to a point where Audi can no longer be considered the absolute benchmark. To be fair to Audi though, I understand that the Porsche benefits from the hybrid system getting the car from 0-60km/h, don’t forget the electric motor is twice as powerful as Audi’s.

Due mainly to its 1-2 finish at Le Mans, Porsche goes into the Nürburgring race with a 16-point lead in the Manufacturers’ championship standings: Porsche has 140 points, Audi 124. Toyota trails on 71.

In the Drivers’ championship, the Audi trio of Lotterer, Tréluyer and Fässler,, third at Le Mans, leads with 80 points, ahead of Porsche drivers Nick Tandy, who has 60, Earl Bamber on 58, and then Lieb, Jani and Dumas on 57 and Hartley, Webber and Bernhard on 53.

Realistically, it is likely that the Audi drivers will still lead the championship after the Nürburgring, but with so many points still available from the remaining races, it really is too early to start making any predictions!

Paul Truswell