After the seven-week summer break, the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) begins again with the fifth of nine races in the 2017 season. Schaeffler and Porsche travel to Mexico as the table leaders.

Thanks to four podium results, including victories at the prestigious 24-hour race of Le Mans and the home race at the Nürburgring, the Porsche trio Earl Bamber/Timo Bernhard/Brendon Hartley lead the WEC drivers’ rankings. Their teammates, Neel Jani/André Lotterer/Nick Tandy – who also compete in a Porsche 919 Hybrid in the top LMP1 class – have two top-three results to their names. In the manufacturers’ championship, Porsche sit at the top of the table. The automobile manufacturer and partner Schaeffler will therefore attack the coming challenge in Mexico with suitable confidence.

In 2017, the WEC will again take place at the 4.304-kilometer Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez circuit, which has already played host to 17 Formula 1 Grands Prix. In terms of business, Mexico is home to three production sites and is an important partner country for Schaeffler. The newest plant in the state of Puebla was inaugurated at the end of 2015 and is specialized, among other things, in the manufacture of torque converters for the US market.

In the motorsport scene, WEC is considered particularly challenging and at the same time an ideal test laboratory for innovative drive technologies. As a pioneer in the development of hybrid systems for production vehicles, Schaeffler considers the WEC an ideal platform to show how the technology transfer between race track and road actually works. Schaeffler is partnering Porsche for the fourth year. Together, in 2015 and 2016 they won both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ world championships, and from 2015 to 2017 they won the great season highlight, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, three times in a row.