No. 8 Toyota Wins Title With Dominant 8H Bahrain Victory

Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi won their second consecutive FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar world drivers’ title with a dominant victory in the 8 Hours of Bahrain.

The No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid converted pole position to win with a margin of 47.516 seconds over the sister No. 7 car of Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi.

Conway, Lopez and Kobayashi needed to win in Bahrain to have any hopes of wrestling the title away from their stablemates, but suffered a significant setback on the opening lap when Conway was tagged into a spin by the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R of Earl Bamber.

The No. 7 car plummeted to the rear of the field as a result, but a strong recovery stint from the Englishman saw the car charge back into the top three by the start of the second hour. 

Co-driver Kobayashi then captured second place with a move on the No. 51 Ferrari 499P of James Calado at Turn 1 early in the third hour, but the No. 7 crew ultimately proved unable to challenge their teammates for victory.

The result marks the third consecutive Hypercar drivers’ crown for Toyota. Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa took the title last year, while Kobayashi, Lopez and Conway were crowned champions in 2021.

The Japanese marque had already clinched the manufacturers’ title at Fuji last month.

Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen finished third aboard the No. 50 Ferrari, coming out on top in a hard-fought battle for the final podium spot that involved the No. 51 sister car and Hertz Team JOTA.

JOTA appeared to be closing in on their first podium finish with the Porsche 963 until Antonio Felix da Costa ran off track at Turn 2 in the sixth hour and rejoined in an unsafe manner in front of the No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GTE.

The Portuguese driver was ordered to serve a drive-through penalty for the infraction, dropping him to fifth behind both Ferraris.

The No. 38 Porsche remained in striking distance, then with Will Stevens at the wheel, when the pair of AF Corse-run entries came to blows in the battle for third.

Fuoco and Alessandro Pier Guidi made contact at Turn 8 and Turn 10, with Fuoco coming out on top while the No. 51  machine faded to sixth after being passed by both Stevens and the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry of Kevin Estre in the span of five minutes.

Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Andre Lotterer rounded out the top five, with the sister No. 5 car of Michael Christensen, Dane Cameron and Fred Makowiecki coming home in seventh place.

The pair of Peugeot 9X8s, along with No. 99 Proton Competition Porsche, completed the top ten. Cadillac finished 11th, with its competitive run curtailed when Bamber received a one-minute stop-and-hold penalty for the contact with Conway at the start.

Rui Andrade, Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz won the final LMP2 title in WEC history by leading a 1-2 victory for Team WRT and winning the class title along the way.

The trio entered the eight-hour finale with a 33-point margin over Inter Europol Competition’s No. 34 crew but came away from the race with the maximum points haul after leading the sister No. 31 Oreca to victory.

Deletraz trailed stablemate Robin Frijns coming into the final round of pitstops, but a significantly slower stop for the No. 31 car allowed the Swiss driver to jump ahead with just over half an hour remaining.

The No. 28 JOTA Oreca of Oliver Rasmussen, David Heinemeier Hansson and Pietro Fittipaldi completed the podium, finishing ahead of the No. 9 Prema Racing machine driven by Filip Ugran, Bent Viscaal and Juan Manuel Correa in fourth.

United Autosports’ No. 23 Oreca, piloted by Josh Pierson, Tom Blomqvist and Oliver Jarvis saw a shot at victory end prematurely when they were ordered to serve a 90-second stop-and-hold penalty for running with tire pressures below the limit.

A similar penalty was handed out earlier in the race to Vector Sport, which had been leading with up a significant gap thanks to Gabriel Aubry.

The Frenchman had survived a chaotic start that saw both United entries involved in a tangle with the No. 4 Vanwell Vandervell 680 Gibson.

Iron Dames Win Final Race of GTE Era

Michelle Gatting, Rahel Frey and Sarah Bovy came out on top to claim the final victory for the GTE-Am class, fending off D’station Racing in the closing stages.

The No. 85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19 started from class pole but ran a significant portion of the race in second place behind the sister No. 60 machine.

Matteo Cressoni drove the opening stint in the car after Bronze-rated driver Claudio Schiavoni had fallen ill before the start of the race and quickly shot up the order, leading after ten minutes.

After building up a significant lead, Cressoni and Alessio Picariello were forced to retire when it became clear that Schiavoni would not be able to complete his minimum required driving time.

This promoted the No. 85 Porsche to the lead, but Gatting faced pressure from the No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin of Casper Stevenson deep in the last hour.

The Dane was able to keep Stevenson at bay, taking a landmark first victory for an all-female crew in the WEC in the GTE-Am class’ final race before it is replaced by LMGT3 next year.

Stevenson, Liam Talbot and Tomonobu Fujii finished second in class, with the No. 98 NorthWest AMR machine of Ian James, Daniel Mancinelli and Alex Riberas completing the podium.

RESULTS: 8 Hours of Bahrain