Hardwick “Surprised” by Rapid Rise that Helped Secure Title

Manthey Porsche driver Ryan Hardwick admitted he was “surprised” to make so much progress during his opening stint in the FIA World Endurance Championship title decider in Bahrain as he stormed through from the back to the top five.

The No. 92 Porsche 911 GT3 R had only qualified 17th of the 18 LMGT3 entries and initially struggled to make progress.

But Hardwick credited the Manthey team for boosting the car’s performance post-qualifying to enable him to steadily make progress to the point where Riccardo Pera was able to exit the pits in fifth place towards the end of the third hour.

Richard Lietz was then second after the final safety car restart but fell to fourth in class over a hectic last couple of laps, although this was still enough for the trio to extend their advantage over the No. 21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 to 14 points in the final standings.

“This team hasn’t had our backs against the wall like that the entire season,” said Hardwick after the tough qualifying performance.

“We didn’t lack confidence, we did have this belief. I didn’t know how we would do it, but I believed somehow our engineers would figure the car out and get it turned around and sure enough they did.

“From the first laps it was a drastically improved car from what we had all through practice and qualifying and it was just a real pleasure to drive.

“I was a bit surprised I was able to get us from the back all the way into the top five in the first three hours – that was some of the most fun I’ve had in a race car.”

Hardwick added that the title success was all the more rewarding because of the close battle with the Ferrari crew across the season.

“To be racing in a world championship in a Porsche racing against a Ferrari for most of the season, you can’t write it any better,” he said.

“It comes down to the final race, we were battling all the way to the end and finishing within one position of each other. We had great competition all year and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Lietz added that the final stages of the race were “more exciting” than he had hoped for as he not only had to contend with LMGT3 rivals but also a string of near-misses when being lapped by Hypercars.

“What I asked for was a boring race and it wasn’t boring at the end unfortunately,” he said. “The VSC closed the gap for everyone and on the restart we definitely had to push from the beginning and I maybe pushed the tires a bit too much.”