Charge to Bahrain Win “Like a Dream” for Buemi

Sebastien Buemi described his charge to an unlikely comeback victory in the 8 Hours of Bahrain as “a bit like a dream,” revealing that “clever” late-race strategy laid the groundwork for a win that allowed Toyota to wrest the manufacturers’ championship from Porsche.

Buemi’s No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid completed a late-race comeback with a pass on the No. 5 Porsche 963 of Matt Campbell in the eight-hour FIA World Endurance Championship season finale, which gave Toyota a crucial advantage in the standings.

The victory for Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley came at the end of a race that saw a strategy of starting on medium tires derailed when the Swiss driver was rear-ended by Hiroshi Koizumi’s No. 82 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R at Turn 1.

“I obviously had to catch back up and those 20 laps behind the BMW really damaged the tires,” said Buemi.

“And we knew the medium would struggle, but I think the only way to get those mediums to work, we could have been to stay ahead which I think I would have been able to do.

“But yeah, then I struggled. We cut the second stint a little bit shorter.”

The team then opted to use the first half of its set of qualifying mediums when Hartley took over, which combined with a struggle for pace on hard-compound tires appeared to leave the No. 8 car out of contention.

However, a pair of safety car interventions brought the car into the fight, with the first pivotal moment coming when the No. 8 crew opted not to take tires during a round of stops triggered when the No. 88 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 stopped on track.

Even then, the No. 8 car was towards the lower edges of the top ten by the time Hirakawa made way for Buemi. However, now with half a set of previously unused tires underneath him, the Swiss racer was able to make up rapid ground to bring the car back in contention.

“When I jumped in, I think I was P10, something like that,” he said.

“So at that point, knowing how hard it is to basically overtake, I thought there would be no chance I can come back. And seeing that the Porsche was second, I thought, ‘Wow, we’ve got to win basically.’

“Then what happened is that, with that little advantage on the tires, I was able to make some moves. Every two laps, three laps, I was able to pass someone.”

With the car back into contention, Buemi then leapfrogged into second place with his final stop and was then able to take full advantage of Toyota’s earlier decision to save a set of mediums when they were deployed for the closing stint.

“We had brand new tires, we wanted to maximize those brand new tires,” said Buemi.

“Because it was okay with the fuel, we decided to cut short the penultimate [stint] and we [did] 25 laps twice].

“Instead of extending to 32 for the first one, and having to do maybe only 19 on the second one, we preferred to stop earlier and maximize the new tire after.”

“You put less fuel [in], you have a shorter stop, and at the same time you can use your tires. That was clever.”

Pressing home his advantage, Buemi set a new fastest lap of the race, caught and passed Campbell with 39 minutes to go and opened a gap of 27 seconds at the checkered flag.

“Obviously I felt like it was a bit like a dream, because you realize you can win and everything goes your way,” he said. “Which it didn’t really go like that the whole season, but today it did.”

Floury: “No Point” Fixing Fuel Pump Issue on No. 7 Toyota

While the victory for Buemi, Hirakawa and Hartley was enough for Toyota to overcome a nine-point deficit and steal the manufacturers’ title away from Porsche, it had to do so with a single car after the sister No. 7 machine fell victim to a fuel pump problem.

The issue first struck with Kamui Kobayashi at the wheel in the third hour.

While the Japanese driver subsequently recovered and fought his way back into second, problems returned and intensified when Nyck de Vries took over.

Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury explained post-race the problems became so severe that it forced the No. 7 car to be pushed into the garage, after which the team made the decision not to further address the issue.

“We were losing the fuel pump gradually,” Floury said. “We started to have intermittent power loss, but it became more and more and we had to stop.

“We decided not to fix the car because it takes 15 to 20 minutes and there was no point in doing that and distracting from the effort of car No. 8.”

Floury further revealed that de Vries was battling an additional problem prior to retirement, which is why he could be seen frequently pushing buttons on the steering wheel.

“We had a second issue because the drop in pressure was triggering a default mode, which is there to protect the engine,” said Floury. “So every time it happened, he had to reset it.”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report