Toyota has dominated the opening round of the FIA World Endurance Championship with Anthony Davidson, Nicolas Lapierre and Sébastien Buemi leading home a Toyota 1-2 at Silverstone.

The trio were deserving winners of the Royal Automobile Club’s Tourist Trophy in a rain-shortened event which was red flagged 38 minutes before the scheduled six hour checkered flag.

Toyota led for more than three-quarters of the race and were in a commanding position in the No.8 TS040 Hybrid when the rain began to fall more and more heavily over the Silverstone Circuit.

“It has been a fantastic weekend and it is brilliant to win my home race,” Davison said.

“The team did a fantastic job all weekend. It looked like it would be an epic fight with Audi and Porsche if it had stayed dry, but we knew the rain was coming and we had set our car up for wet conditions.

“We made the right call on tires, the strategy was just perfect; that’s how you win races. It is particularly special to also win the Tourist Trophy and the Richard Lloyd Trophy. It is a fantastic achievement and I couldn’t have wished for a better weekend.”

The No.7 Toyota TS040 Hybrid of team mates Alex Wurz, Stéphane Sarrazin and Kazuki Nakajima finished in second place, one lap down to their team mates, and the No.20 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley celebrated the team’s return to top line competition with a podium finish.

Audi had a horror race with both cars crashing out the the event – the first sportscar race where they have failed to have a car running at the finish since the 2011 Petit Le Mans.

In LMP2 G-Drive Racing’s No.26 Morgan Nissan, driven by Olivier Pla, Roman Rusinov and Julien Canal, came out as winners ahead of the No. 47 KCMG ORECA 03 Nissan after a battle from start to finish which saw the lead being traded often.

In GTE-Pro, the No.92 Porsche 911 RSR of Marco Holzer, Frederic Makowiecki and Richard Lietz gave the team the best possible start to its 2014 season by winning 45 seconds ahead of their team mates in the No.92 Porsche 911 RSR (Pilet-Bergmeister-Tandy). Third in class was the No.97 Aston Martin Racing Vantage V8 of Darren Turner and Stefan Mücke and these three, together with the fourth placed No.51 AF Corse Ferrari all finished on the same lap.

The next round of the 2014 FIA World Endurance Championship will be at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on the May 2-3.