(L-R) Mark Webber of Australia, Brendon Hartley of New Zealand and Timo Bernhard of Germany, of the Porsche team celebrate after winning the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship race in Shanghai on November 6, 2016. / AFP / JOHANNES EISELE (Photo credit should read JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)

Porsche celebrated their sixth win of the WEC season along with second FIA World Endurance Manufacturers’ Championship in a row in front of 55,000 adoring Chinese fans in Shanghai on Sunday.

The penultimate round of the 2016 season saw a win for the no1 Porsche with Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber as well as a 4th place finish for the no2 919 Hybrid of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb, who are the championship leaders, giving them a 79 point lead over their rivals at Toyota and Audi with just one race remaining.

It was the fourth win of the season for the Hartley, Webber and Bernhard trio, after a brilliant pole on Saturday. They lost the lead briefly on the opening lap as well as during pitstops but by the end of six hours racing, they crossed the line in front of the entire team lining the wall to celebrate the victory and their second WEC title in succession.

Hartley set the fastest race lap with at time of 1.45,935 minutes on the 5.451 kilometre long Shanghai International Circuit. The six-hour race was held in dry conditions and temperatures of around 23 degrees Celsius.

“What a day!” he said after the race. “The first corner after the start was interesting. I think the Toyota used a big package of energy from the e-motor and passed me quite easily into turn one. I knew he would suffer later in the lap, because according to the rules you can only use a certain amount of energy. I got him just before the safety car came out.”

“This was a good little battle on the first lap, and after that I just tried to keep it clean and handed the car over with an 18 second lead. We had to change the nose because a massive peace of rubber had damaged the light. Once again our pit stops were great and on my last double stint everything went smoothly. I am very, very happy.”

“Brendon was flying today and Timo’s double stint was really nice," added Mark Webber  "I did a single stint and got some used tyres out of the way before Brendon brought it home. It was an amazing day for Porsche and we are really happy to have contributed to it.”