Bahrain 8 Hour: Gazoo Toyota are six-time champions
It must have been a case of sweet revenge when Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Sebastien Buemi made a robust move Penske Porsche driver Matt Campbell to win the Bahrain 8 Hour season finale on Saturday. It meant that Toyota stole the 2024 World Endurance Championship for Manufacturers from Porsche. Porsche drivers Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer however escaped with the Driver’s title, but only after the second Toyota and the Le Mans winning Ferrari faltered in the race.
It was in a way payback for Toyota. The Japanese team lost its almost certain maiden Le Mans 24 Hour victory when the Japanese giant’s car broke on the final lap of that 2016 race to hand victory to Porsche.
Toyota avenged Le Mans pain at Bahrain 8 Hour
Eight years later, Toyota handed its archrival back the pain of losing the championship it had led for the whole season, in dramatic style, when Buemi mounted an incredible fightback to nick the title by just two championship points in the Bahrain 8 Hour. Also in contention al the way, Ferrari ended third in the Manufacturer’s chase ahead of another dramatic development when Alpine took fourth off BMW at Bahrain.
Pole man Buemi led the way early in the race, only for the Toyota to be taken out while lapping a LMGT3 Corvette 20 minutes in and drop way down the order. Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa then drove the 8 Gazoo Toyota GR010 Hybrid back up the field to see Buemi sitting tenth when racing resumed after a safety car with 90 minutes to go.
Buemi made dramatic progress as he kept out of trouble to catch, and then barge his way past leader Campbell and go on to the win. It was Toyota’s eighth straight Bahrain 8 Hour victory as it stole its sixth straight WEC title too.
Ferrari looked good for titles at Bahrain 8 Hour
Antonio Giovinazzi, James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi’s Ferrari, which had controlled most of the race, also came back to steal second from Campbell on the final lap. Only to lose the place when the 51 499P LMH was penalised for exceeding its tyre allocation to plummet to 14th.
Toyota indeed looked set to also steal the Driver’s title from Porsche when #7 Toyota crew, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries sharing with Mike Conway led at the fifth hour. But fuel feed issues forced them to retire, leaving the 51 Ferrari fighting the 12 JOTA Porsche 963 for the lead, until a puncture ended that Porsche’s victory hopes too.
With the Campbell Christensen Makowiecki Penske Porsche second, Mikkel Jensen, Nico Muller and Jean-Eric Vergne Peugeot fought to ultimately finish third in the race after the Ferrari penalty in that team’s best finish of the season. They fought the Chatin Habsburg Gounon Alpine back in fourth ahead of BMW crew Vanthoor, Marciello and Wittmann.
Alpine Pipped BMW to championship fourth
The Bamber, Lyn, Bourdais Cadillac, Button, Hanson and Rasmussen’s JOTA Porsche, Kubica, Shwartzman and Yifei in the yellow Ferrari and Milesi, Schumacher and Vaxiviere second Alpine closed off the top ten as Alpine slipped past BMW into fourth in the Manufacturer’s championship with a double points finish.
Eleventh was good enough for the 6 Porsche crew Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer to clinch the driver’s title in a tough race. Vanthoor found himself off track on the opening lap and dropped to 15th. The trio then fought back to second. But a drive-through penalty for a yellow flag infringement, and then a five-second circuit limits overtake penalty saw then tumble back down the.
The Porsche crew then survived being shuffled out of the championship lead twice. First when first the leading Toyota retired. Then Nicklas Nielsen’s leading Le Mans winning 50 Ferrari was clipped by a spinning Alpine to drop out of the lead, and the points. Nielsen, Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina ultimately end up 12th on the road.
Ferrari WiN Bahrain 8 Hour LMGT3
Vanthoor, Estre and Lotterer ultimately took the Driver’s title by a handy 37 points from Nielsen, Fuoco and Molina. With Kobayashi and de Vries two points further adrift. Toyota are manufacturer’s champions by all of two points from Ferrari, Alpine, BMW, Peugeot and the lone Cadillac entry. And Porsche teams JOTA won the Hypercar privateer’s title and Manthey Purex, and its drivers Alexander Malykhin, Joel Strum ad Klaus Bachcler the LMGT3 Teams and Drivers titles.
The Road to Le Mans starts all over again early in 2023. Can Toyota once again shake off the best in the world and take a seventh straight title? And can Ferrari do a Le Mans Hat Trick? Or will Porsche dominate? Time will tell!