Buemi Leads Opening Hour as Conway Suffers Early Setback

Sebastien Buemi led the opening hour of the FIA World Endurance Championship season finale in Bahrain as his Toyota teammate and title rival Mike Conway encountered a setback at Turn 1.

Conway, who started alongside pole-sitter Buemi, was tagged into a spin by the Cadillac V-Series.R of Earl Bamber who locked up his front tires braking for the first corner.

That caused the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi to tumble down the Hypercar order as leader Buemi charged clear in the opening stages of the eight-hour contest.

Bamber’s Cadillac was given a one-minute stop-and-hold for causing the collision and eventually dropped off the lead lap.

Conway gradually overtook the Peugeot 9X8s, Porsche 963s and Miguel Moloina’s Ferrari 499P to reach third by the time the first Hypercar pit stops took place.

Crucially, despite Conway making up lost positions, the gap between the Toyotas increased by around eight seconds. The No. 7 crew needs to beat the No. 8 lineup to have any chance of reversing a 16-point deficit in the Hypercer drivers’ championship.

Buemi’s No. 8 Toyota built a 20-second lead over the No. 51 Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi, who overtook his teammate Molina at Turn 15 after 20 minutes of racing.

Molina then came under pressure from Will Stevens, who started ninth in the Hertz Team JOTA Porsche. Stevens completed a move on the Spaniard through Turn 2 after going around the outside at Turn 1 towards the end of the opening stint.

A few corners later, Conway got past both drivers after benefiting from their duel.

There was drama at the start of the LMP2 race as contact with the Vanwall Vandervelle 680 Gibson resulted in both United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibsons spinning around.

Alpine driver Matthieu Vaxiviere was also involved, but Gabriel Aubry avoided the mayhem to emerge as the class leader for Vector Sport.

The Gold-rated Frenchman opened a substantial advantage as some of the chasing teams elected to start with their mandatory Silver-rated drivers. After the first round of stops, Aubry was 20 seconds clear of Filip Ugran in the second-placed Prema Oreca.

Iron Lynx’s decision to start with Silver-rated Matteo Cressoni, due to his Bronze co-driver Claudio Schiavoni feeling unwell, similarly paid dividends as the Italian brought the No. 60 Porsche 911 RSR-19 into the GTE-Am lead from 12th on the grid.

Cressoni overtook the pole-sitting Iron Dames Porsche of Sarah Bovy after 10 minutes and went on to increase the gap by more than 10 seconds.

The Aston Martin Vantage GTEs of Liam Talbot and Ahmad Al Harthy ran third and fourth, while Corvette Racing elected to make a strategic early pit stop to get its starting driver Ben Keating out of traffic.