While they won this year at Le Mans, the Circuit of The Americas 1-2 victory for Audi Sport is the first “sprint” race victory for Audi in 2014.

The German manufacturer battled Porsche, Toyota and a Texas torrential downpour over the six hour journey to take the 1-2 victory with the No.2 machine of Andrew Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer and Marcel Fassler winning over Lucas Di Grassi, Tom Kristensen and Loic Duval who was making his return to racing after his dramatic qualifying crash at Le Mans.

The race was interrupted by a huge downpour which drenched the circuit and sent multiple cars off track and delayed the battle under a red flag for 50 minutes.

The No.2 car of  Lotterer/Tréluyer/Fassler took the upper hand over the No.1 car courtesy of a tire call when Treluyer and Kristensen climbed aboard their respective mounts on a drying track in the third hour. Treluyer was given Michelin’s ungrooved intermediate ‘hybrid’ tyre, while Kristensen continued on the wet.

“A superb result for the team. You can’t wish for anything better than first and second place,” Lotterer said.

“The team performance today was superb. This also applies to our partner Michelin. The technical crew was confident that we’d only have to change the tires at every other stop. We didn’t make any mistakes in the rain either. This was an important step in the Championship.”

The Toyota of Anthony Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Nicolas Lapierre took third ahead of the two Porsche prototyes which also challenged strongly during the race

“It was a fantastic race. A lot happened. The number 8 Toyota was very fast in the beginning, but initially they always are,” Tréluyer said.

“Then we had a good pace and were close to them. After the rain interruption we started at the front. That made it possible for me to control the pace and the advantage.

“I didn’t take too many risks and am happy with my stint. André (Lotterer) and Marcel (Fässler) drove superbly too. As at Le Mans, we didn’t touch any rivals. This is one of the key factors this year for mounting the very top of the podium.”

Other class wins went to Mark Howson, Richard Bradley and Japanese Super GT ace Tsugio Matsuda in LMP2; Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke for Aston Martin in GTE-Pro and Paul Dalla Lana, Pedro Lamy and Christian Nygaard also on board an Aston in GTE-Am.

//www.dailymotion.com/video/x26cdg2_overall-podium-race-press-conference-6-hours-of-cota_auto