Toyota in Control of 8H Bahrain at Halfway Mark

Brendon Hartley and Kamui Kobayashi held a comfortable 1-2 lead for Toyota Gazoo Racing over Ferrari’s James Calado with half of the 8 Hours of Bahrain completed.

With four hours remaining at the Bahrain International Circuit, the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid in the hands of Hartley sat 45.912 seconds ahead of the sister car driven by Kobayashi.

Hartley experienced some drama towards the halfway point after contact with the No. 86 GR Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Mike Wainwright at Turn 11, although no penalties for the incident were handed out by race control.

The sister No. 7 Toyota recovered from its early setback at the start and already ran in third place by the end of the opening hour, but moved into second place when Kobayashi overtook Calado early in hour three.

The Japanese driver moved past Calado’s No. 51 Ferrari 499P at Turn 1 and went on to open up a gap of just over 15 seconds.

However, the No. 8 crew still holds the advantage in terms of the Hypercar world drivers’ championship having entered the race with a 16-point edge.

Calado subsequently came under pressure from the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche 963 of Yifei Ye, who closed down a gap of some 20 seconds and remained within striking distance of the Ferrari before pitting exactly at the halfway point.

Kevin Estre rounded out the top five aboard the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry after a pit stop for the No. 50 Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen that dropped the Dane to sixth.

Gustavo Menezes ran in seventh behind the wheel of the No. 94 Peugeot 9X8 ahead of the sister machine of Mikkel Jensen, with Gianmaria Bruni and Fred Makowiecki completing the top ten.

Oliver Jarvis led the LMP2 class at the wheel of the No. 23 United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibson, with the Anglo-American squad engaged in battle with both Prema Racing and Team WRT after Vector Sport fell away from the lead due to a penalty.

Jarvis sat 11.622 seconds clear of Prema’s Bent Viscaal, with Robin Frijns third for Team WRT.

Vector Sport, which led early on, fell away when it was ordered to serve a 90-second stop-and-go for running “constantly with tire pressures below the limit” from lap 25 to 39.

Its No. 10 Oreca has dropped to tenth in class, while Inter Europol Competition also encountered trouble when its No. 34 car briefly ground to a halt on track for a second time before continuing.

In GTE-Am, Iron Lynx continued to lead with its No. 60 Porsche 911 RSR-19 in the hands of Alessio Picariello, a minute and a half in front of the No. 85 Iron Dames machine piloted by Sarah Bovy.

Picariello has been sharing the car with Silver-rated Matteo Cressoni for the first half, with Cressoni taking the start after Bronze driver Claudio Schiavoni felt unwell. Schiavoni is yet to drive and needs to complete two hours and 20 minutes at the wheel.

D’station Racing’s No. 777 Aston Martin Vantage GTE rounded out the top three with Casper Stevenson at the helm.