Bahrain Post-Race Notebook

***The FIA World Endurance Championship crowned its 2023 champions in a beachside awards ceremony on Sunday evening. Sebastien Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley collected the Hypercar drivers’ trophies for the second year in a row. Buemi and Hartley are now the joint most successful drivers in terms of top-category world titles with four each.

***Hertz Team JOTA won the FIA World Cup for Hypercar Teams, beating Proton Competition. Lineups from Team WRT and Corvette Racing won the FIA Endurance Trophies in LMP2 and GTE-Am.

***The ceremony also included some special awards. Doriane Pin was named ‘Revelation of the Year’ for her debut season in LMP2 with Prema, while Thomas Flohr scooped the ‘Sports Racer of the Year’ as one of the standout amateur drivers.

***General Motors sports car racing program manager Laura Wontrop Klauser received the ‘Personality of the Year’ accolade. Peugeot won the DHL Sustainability Endurance Award for its efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

***Despite the early contact dealing an ultimately crucial blow to the No. 7 Toyota crew’s title hopes, Mike Conway told Sportscar365 that he enjoyed his drive back up the order during the opening stint. “It was fun,” he said. “Lots of overtaking maneuvers, which was nice. Otherwise, you’d just be sat there looking at the back of car No. 8 for a few laps.”

***Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez lost out on the title despite winning twice as many races as the No. 8 lineup, with their retirement at the 24 Hours of Le Mans dealing a big blow to their chances.

***Conway said: “With it being a short championship, seven races, it’s hard to catch it back up. But next year being eight, if someone does have a difficult Le Mans, maybe there’s a chance you can get back. That’s the thing, with the double points at Le Mans and only seven races, it’s hard and obviously Portimao wasn’t great either.”

***Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo opened a post-race debrief with reporters by addressing paddock “rumors” about the manufacturer’s pace.

***Cannizzo said: “I would like to get rid of these rumors that we slow down our cars to get a better BoP. This will never happen. I think we need respect because we are always doing our best. We don’t want these rumors going through the paddock because this is definitely not true.”

***The No. 51 Ferrari 499P lost ground towards the end due to an issue on the rear dampers that the AF Corse factory team will analyze further. Alessandro Pier Guidi finished sixth after being passed by Will Stevens and Kevin Estre’s Porsche 963s. “It was some problem related to the shock absorber there,” Cannizzo offered. “Maybe we lost the gas. But clearly it was not able to get the grip specifically on the rear.”

***Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie said the pair of 9X8s, which finished eighth and ninth, were “exactly as expected” after struggling since the start of the weekend. The No. 94 car of Gustavo Menezes went on to Michelin’s medium compound at the end.

***Jansonnie said: “I think it was the key item of the weekend, to try and find the pace. We constantly asked the drivers to respect the pace in the end to make sure the degradation was not going through the roof and we could finish the stints properly, which we managed quite well. The drivers did manage that quite easily.”

***The No. 99 Proton Competition Porsche 963 came home tenth after battling a mid-race issue with the footrest, which affected the car’s braking when Gianmaria Bruni was at the wheel. The German squad was forced to make repairs to the cockpit for the second consecutive WEC race, costing valuable time.

***Team WRT ended the WEC’s LMP2 era with its tenth win out of 19 races over the last three seasons. Its victory marked the team’s fourth consecutive in Bahrain, making it undefeated in race attempts there. “It’s the happiest end we could have to our three seasons in LMP2 racing,” said team principal Vincent Vosse.

***The Vanwall Vandervell 680 Gibson struggled with engine issues during the race. It is understood that Floyd Vanwall Racing Team changed the car’s ignition coil and injectors as it battled with a lack of power.

***Michelin Motorsport endurance racing manager Pierre Alves said it was “no surprise” to see Hypercar teams favor the French supplier’s hard option over the medium for most of the race as track temperatures remained above 30 degrees C beyond sunset.

***Alves added: “All the Hypercar teams systematically changed their left-hand tires, and Toyota Gazoo Racing only switched to the medium compound for the last hour-and-a-half, and even then, only for the right-hand wheels.”

***Both Ferrari 499Ps and the Hertz Team JOTA Porsche remained on hards all the way through. Both Toyotas, both factory Porsche 963s and one Peugeot tried the medium.

***GTE-Am winner Michelle Gatting expressed sympathy for the teammate No. 60 Iron Lynx Porsche crew, which had to retire from the lead with just over two hours remaining as Bronze-rated driver Claudio Schiavoni was unwell and unable to drive. As a Bronze, he needed to do two hours and 20 minutes.

***Gatting told Sportscar365: “We had an idea of what was going on. Sad for them because it looked very nice at one point having the two Iron Lynx cars up there. It’s racing sometimes. Everyone has to be well and unfortunately it was not the case today.”

***Porsche bookended the GTE-Am era with victories in both the first and last race of the class. Gatting, Rahel Frey and Sarah Bovy took the manufacturer’s 24th and final win after Team Felbermayr-Proton won at Sebring in 2012. Proton provided the Porsche 911 RSR-19s to Iron Lynx this season. “We’re going in the history books,” Gatting said. “We’re very proud but hopefully many more to come of this in the GT3 cars.”

***A potential defining moment in GTE-Am occurred just before the final driver change for D’station Racing when Tomonobu Fujii stopped a few pit boxes too early with two hours to go. This cost around eight seconds, according to the team. Casper Stevenson then closed the gap from 26 seconds to be on Gatting’s tail but ended up 5.5 seconds short at the line.

***An engine failure caused the No. 25 ORT by TF Sport Aston Martin to retire with 20 minutes to go. “We were catching, and the podium was there to be fair,” said Ahmad Al Harthy.

***Both United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibsons sustained front and rear-end damage in their first-lap collision at Turn 2, which also involved the Vanwall. Technical director Jakub Andreasen told Sportscar365 that United changed the rear decks of both cars, but left the noses on.

***Andreasen said the damage impacted the lasting pace of both Orecas. “It was a case of trying to minimize the damage in the race,” he noted. “It was a difficult race for us. We changed the tail on 23, but on inspection both the noses were damaged as well.”

***United Autosports and Vector Sport both lost the lead in LMP2 due to 90-second stop/go penalties for having low tire pressures. It is understood that the United car had one tire under the limit whereas all four tires on the Vector car were in breach.

***Vector was not classified in the finishing order after its car encountered a suspected engine throttle sensor issue, according to a team spokesperson.

***Juan Manuel Correa called Prema’s fourth in LMP2 as “so close yet so far” as it missed out on a first podium despite being in contention for much of the race. “We have just been caught out a little bit with the fuel-saving and didn’t realize that people were going for that strategy until it was too late,” he said. “Maybe not the best call, but it is what it is.”

***WEC CEO Frederic Lequien revealed that the championship has almost doubled its TV audience this year while also doubling the fan engagement on social media. A big part of the success was the second season of WEC’s ‘Full Access’ YouTube docuseries, which generates more than 400,000 views.

***This year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, which had a sold-out crowd, boasted a 100,000-person waiting list for tickets according to ACO President Pierre Fillon.

***A decision on whether the WEC will return to Monza for the 2025 season once upgrade work has been completed has not yet been decided, according to Lequien. Imola replaces Monza on next year’s calendar.

***Lequien said: “We have a super good relationship with the Automobile Club of Italia and management of Imola and Monza. Let’s do the first race in Imola with WEC and then we’ll see after. The two tracks are wonderful in Italy and the decision is not taken at the moment.”

***Antonio Felix da Costa wants to reunite with his “family” at JOTA in the future after he focuses on Formula E next year. “You cannot believe how sad I am to not be here next year,” he said. “Especially when there was the willing to do it, from my side and the team’s side. It hurts, but I’ll trust my bosses for a future comeback. [JOTA] are my family. They’ve given me the chance to win Le Mans.”

John Dagys and Davey Euwema contributed to this report