Bahrain Post-Race Notebook

***With third and fourth places in Saturday’s 8 Hours of Bahrain, Ferrari became only the fourth different manufacturer to claim an outright title in the FIA World Endurance Championship after Audi, Toyota and Porsche, as the Prancing Horse ended a 53-year drought since its previous title success in world championship sports car racing in 1972.

***James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi join Porsche driver Kevin Estre among an exclusive club of drivers to have won drivers’ titles in both prototypes and GT machinery. Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi become the first Italians to win the outright crown, while Calado becomes the fourth British driver to do so following Allan McNish (2013), Anthony Davidson (2014) and Mike Conway (2019-20, 2021).

***Ferrari notably chose to keep both of its factory 499P on left-side Hard compound tires for the full race distance, even after most of its rivals had started using Mediums all round in the cooler temperatures of the evening, preferring a safety-first approach with the world championship on the line.

***Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo explained: “We worked very hard on consistency, especially in the second stint, knowing it was impossible to be the fastest car on peak performance. Considering our performance was still good, and even Toyota was struggling at the end of the first stint on the Medium, we decided to stay there. There was no reason to risk any dangerous strategy considering how strong we were on mixed compounds.”

***Cannizzo acknowledged that beating Toyota was “probably impossible” but felt that beating the penalized No. 8 car could have been possible hard the cards fallen differently with caution periods. “Without the transition that reset the tire sets availability, we had the possibility to beat one Toyota and be close to car 7,” he said. “But I respect the fact they did an amazing race and they definitely deserved the win. Their race was perfect.”

***On a tough day for the LMDh contingent, Cannizzo added: “I was expecting to have Porsche and Cadillac closer. They showed potential sometimes, but I think they were missing on tire management. It seems they suffered a lot on tire degradation. It was relatively easy for us to overtake them after they lost the peak performance of the tires.”

***Toyota’s victory the 8 Hours of Bahrain marked the Japanese manufacturer’s 49th in the WEC, and the first win for the No. 7 side of the garage since last year’s Imola round. In addition, the GR010 Hybrid became the first car to win 20 races outright in the series.

***Conway picked up the 23rd win of his career, drawing him level with Toyota stablemate Brendon Hartley for second on the all-time winners’ list, while Kamui Kobayashi took his 18th — surpassing Kazuki Nakajima for most wins for a Japanese driver — and Nyck de Vries his third, and second in Hypercar.

***Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury acknowledged that Ferrari appeared to have an edge in the warmer conditions of the opening hours, before the Japanese marque reasserted itself when the temperatures dropped after sunset and the focus switched to the Medium compound Michelin tire.

***Floury said: “You know you will start with hot conditions and the temperature will drop — it’s a bit like Daytona, you don’t set the car up for the night, you do the opposite.”

***Addressing Toyota’s decision to split strategies between its two cars, with Brendon Hartley double stinting all four Michelins at the start and then pitting for the second time early, Floury said: “We tried to save tires for the end of the race. The first virtual safety car came quite early and as we were out of sync, it was to the benefit of car 8, and we changed four tires when most other cars just topped up on energy.”

***Floury also acknowledged the timing of the final interruption was beneficial to the No. 8 car, which earlier was hit by a drive-through penalty that Ryo Hirakawa incurred for passing under yellows. Asked if Hirakawa, Hartley and Sebastien Buemi could have won the race without the penalty, Floury replied: “It would have been quite tight I think.”

***Toyota’s 1-2 finish allowed it to jump both Porsche and Cadillac to finish second in the manufacturers’ championship, 74 points behind Ferrari.

***With his second win in LMGT3 as part of the No. 87 Akkodis ASP Lexus crew, Jose Maria Lopez now has 17 WEC wins in total, with his co-drivers Clemens Schmid and Razvan Umbrarescu both picking up their second victories on a banner day for Toyota.

***Lopez, who was aboard the Lexus RC F GT3 for the run to the checkered flag after the second and final safety car period, said he didn’t expect to be able to hold position against his rivals on fresher rubber in the closing stages, as he came under pressure from Mattia Drudi’s Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.

***Lopez said: “The tire degradation on our car is quite a lot, even if we have the Hard tires it’s still the weakest point. Clemens and Petru [Umbrarescu] managed to build a very good gap, but every time we had a gap, we had to start again and at the end I didn’t have new tires. They were coming fast and it’s hard to believe it would be possible. I risked it a bit in traffic, but I was in the right place at the right time and we made it.”

***ASP team owner Jerome Policand also paid tribute to the team’s partnership with Toyota as the No. 87 drivers rounded off the season with third in the drivers’ standings. “As a team we didn’t expect to do so well because 2024 was a very tough season,” said Policand. “What we achieved in two years with Toyota — not starting from zero, but this car is a bit special with the modifications for the FIA aero window — to be among the front runners after eight races is a great feeling.”

***Porsche Penske Motorsport had a challenging final race in WEC competition, with the pair of factory Porsche 963s finishing out of the points in 13th and 14th. It came after two penalties for the No. 6 car, which Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid said was also impacted by being stuck behind a Peugeot 9X8 during Matt Campbell’s stint. “I think Matt lost 20 seconds in that stint and passed the Peugeot maybe seven times and just got driven around again,” he said.

***While there were no notable setbacks for the No. 5 Porsche, Diuguid indicated that car struggled more on tire degradation. The 963s ran as the heaviest Hypercars in the class per the event’s Balance of Performance.

***Diuguid said he was “really happy” with Laurin Heinrich’s performance on the German’s prototype debut. “It was Laurin’s first time in the car in a race and he really didn’t make any mistakes. I think he struggled on his first cold tire out lap, relative to the Alpines because they were on Mediums and we were still on Hards. So he lost two or three spots there but after that he maintained the gap to Kevin [Estre] in the 6 [car].”

***Summing up Porsche Penske’s WEC finale, Diuguid said: “I’m proud of the team and we brought two cars home all in one piece. We definitely didn’t have the pace today, which was disappointing. It’s not the way we wanted to finish. We dropped to P3 in the manufacturers’ championship with Toyota’s 1-2 there. We pushed throughout the entire race. It just wasn’t our day.”

***Team members on both Penske Porsches, including Roger Penske himself, signed the cars on Saturday prior to the start of Porsche Penske Motorsport’s final WEC race. The crew wrote the words “No Revolution” on the final set of tires to go on the car for the final stint.

***AF Corse’s Phil Hanson lamented getting stuck behind the No. 12 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac V-Series.R during the early stages of the race, which he felt cost the No. 83 Ferrari crew a shot at battling with the No. 51 Ferrari for the drivers’ title.

***Hanson said: “After the first stint we were right there. But in my second stint I was very compromised by the Cadillac for the entire stint, which was a bit difficult to digest to know that I was never able to actually get past and was stuck.”

***Hanson said the satellite AF Corse Ferrari crew then adopted an alternate strategy to try to take advantage of any cautions, but the final safety came at the wrong moment. “There was a period in the race where we had managed to successfully offset ourselves that, had a safety car or full-course yellow fallen at the opportune time, we would’ve been able to capitalize on it,” he said. “If we had the fortune teller’s globe to tell you when the safety cars come out, we would win every race. But it doesn’t go that way.”

***The No. 12 Cadillac of Alex Lynn, Norman Nato and Will Stevens was the only Hypercar to score points in every race this season. The trio ended up finishing fifth in the drivers’ world championship, just one point behind Porsche Penske’s Laurens Vanthoor and Kevin Estre, who slipped to fourth in the standings.

***Lynn told Sportscar365 he felt sixth and best of the LMDh runners was the best result possible. “I think we maximized everything,” he said. “We got a bit lucky at the end with the VSC, but I think it was a good race. We were gutted not to get third in the drivers’ [championship], because Will was fighting hard to pass Robert [Kubica], but then with the switch [between cars 50 and 51] it wouldn’t have been enough. But I am proud.”

***Reflecting on the year as a whole, Lynn added: “I think what JOTA has done with the Cadillac is turn it into a very good racing car. When you look at the conditions we raced with this weekend, clearly we are considered a good car now. And that’s a credit to JOTA. We won a race, three poles, I think we did a good job.”

***Jenson Button was installed in the No. 38 Cadillac for the final stint of the race, closing out his career as a professional driver with a 16th-place finish. The 2009 Formula 1 world champion, who was using a special black-and-yellow helmet design resembling the one used for his early karting days for his final WEC race, also gave a speech during Sunday night’s Awards Ceremony as he took home the Legacy Award.

***BMW M Team WRT has handed a €5,000 fine ($5,780 USD) for sending the No. 15 M Hybrid V8 out of the pits with an improperly fitted right-rear wheel at its final pit stop, which contributed to the car’s retirement and caused the second safety car.

***The relevant stewards’ bulletin read: “Having reviewed the video evidence and heard the team representative, the stewards determined that car 15 was released from its working area with the rear right wheel bolt not properly tightened. Considering the matter extensively, the stewards concluded that this incident constitutes a serious safety infringement and have therefore decided to impose a €5,000 fine on the competitor.”

***Alpine team principal Phillipe Sinault described the marque’s race as “encouraging” despite missing out on overhauling BMW for fifth in the manufacturers’ standings by a single point amid the late race safety car that left the marque’s top finisher 11th.

***Sinault said: “We knew we had a good race pace, so the strategy was to save the tires for the final hours. That’s what we did, and we were in a position to aim for fifth to seventh place before the final hour. That was very satisfying given our starting positions [13th and 15th]. Then there was the virtual safety car and the safety car intervention. That’s racing. It’s obviously frustrating not to be rewarded with a better result, but the great satisfaction remains in the speed we showed.”

***New Alpine signing Antonio Felix da Costa, who topped Sunday’s rookie test, will be unable to stay on for the team’s test in Bahrain on Wednesday as he is instead traveling to Monteblanco, Spain for Formula E testing duties for Jaguar.

***Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie was left to lament the marque’s decision to pit early with both cars after the first safety car period, which backfired during the second interruption in the final hour as the two 9X8s dropped from top-five contention to ninth and 10th places.

***Jansonnie told reporters: “We knew we could achieve P5 and P6 if everything was working, which was not so different from the regular strategy. We decided to take it. To score big points you need to take a risk, but it didn’t quite pay off.”

***Manthey recorded back-to-back LMGT3 titles, with the German squad and Porsche remaining undefeated, both at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the season-long championship in the category’s two-year history.

***Porsche 911 GT3 R project manager Sebastian Golz said: “This success story in the LMGT3 category is hard to beat: two class wins at Le Mans and the championship titles in LMGT3 are no small achievement. The teams at Manthey in Meuspath and at Porsche Motorsport in Weissach can be proud of the foundation they have built and the results they have fought for on track.”

***Ryan Hardwick became the fourth American driver to win a WEC title, following in the footsteps of Gustavo Menezes (2016, LMP2), Patrick Lindsey (2018-19, GTE-Am) and Ben Keating (2022, 2023, GTE-Am). Hardwick is expected to focus his efforts in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races with Manthey next year, with Yasser Shahin tipped to rejoin the German squad in the WEC.

***Hardwick also picked up the Goodyear Wingfoot award, seeing off competition in the final fan vote of the season from Lopez, Ben Keating and Martin Berry.

***Richard Lietz meanwhile became only the second driver to score titles in two different GT classes after Aston Martin’s Marco Sorensen, having previously previously won the 2015 GTE-Pro title with Manthey.

***Sportscar365 has learned of an additional manufacturer that has been in discussions with at least one LMDh constructor on a potential program that could start as early as 2028. It’s understood a decision will come by the middle of next year, the same timeframe when the single set of unified LMDh/LMH regulations are due to be confirmed.

***Bahrain International Circuit and the WEC presented long-time photographer Andrew “Skippy” Hall with a cake pre-race on Saturday in honor of his final WEC race following a storied nearly 30-year career spanning the globe. Hall was also given the Excellence Award in Sunday night’s Awards Ceremony.

***Other awards included Revelation of the Year for Racing Spirit of Leman driver Eduardo Barrichello, Sports Racer of the Year for Team WRT’s Ahmad Al Harthy, Personality of the Year for TF Sport team owner Tom Ferrier, and the Wingfoot Award by Goodyear, which went to AF Corse driver Alessio Rovera for his performances across the season in the LMGT3 class.

***Giovinazzi was a notable absentee from the ceremony, with co-driver Calado revealing that the Italian departed for home shortly after the race as his wife Antonella was giving birth — making him a world champion and a father on the same day.

John Dagys & Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report