Hartley Sweeps Free Practice for 8H Bahrain

Photo: James Moy/Toyota

Brendon Hartley has claimed a sweep of Free Practice sessions, having topped the time sheets again in the third and final session prior to qualifying for Saturday’s 8 Hours of Bahrain.

The Kiwi recorded a best time of 1:48.346 in his No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, edging out teammate Kamui Kobayashi by 0.431 seconds.

It was 0.673 seconds slower than his best time set in FP2, which has so far been the quickest of the 8 Hours of Bahrain weekend so far.

The No. 36 Alpine A480 Gibson was unable to go quicker than the two fastest cars in LMP2, recording a best lap of 1:51.794.

JOTA returned to form with the No. 38 Oreca 07 Gibson going quickest in LMP2, thanks to a 1:51.188 lap time set by Antonio Felix Da Costa.

The Portuguese driver was 0.336 seconds quicker than Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 22 United Autosports Oreca and the sister No. 28 JOTA entry in third.

Porsche returned to the top in GTE-Pro with a 1:56.590 lap time set by Kevin Estre in the No. 92 Porsche 911 RSR-19, outpacing the sister No. 91 entry by eight-tenths.

The pair of AF Corse Ferraris, which have lodged a protest against the Balance of Performance measures, were third and fourth quickest in class.

GTE-Am was paced by the No. 56 Team Project 1 Porsche of Matteo Cairoli, who made a late-session improvement on the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen to grab the top spot.

The session was extended by roughly 10 minutes after a red flag for bollards that had become dislodged and required cleaning up.

Qualifying gets underway at 5:20 p.m. local time.

RESULTS: Free Practice 3

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John