Weekend Recap: World Champions Crowned in Bahrain
Catch up on FIA World Endurance Championship action from Bahrain International Circuit
No. 7 Toyota Wins Bahrain Finale; Sister Car Takes Title
Toyota took a dominant 1-2 finish in Saturday’s 8 Hours of Bahrain, with Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa taking the FIA World Endurance Championship drivers’ title by finishing second.
The No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez won the race by 45.471 seconds over the No. 8 sister car.
The No. 8 crew started the race from pole one point ahead in the standings compared to the No. 36 Alpine A480 Gibson of Nico Lapierre, Andre Negrao and Matthieu Vaxiviere.
Lapierre took the challenge to the Toyotas early on, but quickly began to fade as Toyota extended its advantage.
The overall lead between the two Toyotas changed hands approaching the halfway point as Conway swapped positions with Hartley in a pre-agreed move. From there, the No. 7 car from cruised to victory.
Second place for Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa was enough to secure the drivers’ championship as the Alpine trio completed the podium in third.
It marked Toyota’s fifth world championship title and fourth consecutive in the globe-trotting series.
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Gearbox Issue Put No. 51 Ferrari “Almost at Point of Retirement”
James Calado said he was prepared to ‘keep going until the car died’ en route to the world title as a gearbox issue brought the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo to the brink of retirement during the closing hours of the 8 Hours of Bahrain.
Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi secured their third GTE world drivers championship in Saturday’s FIA World Endurance Championship season finale, but did so in a dramatic scenario that saw the pairing limp home with a serious gearbox issue that struck well into the second half of the race.
The Briton was at the wheel of the car, leading the class and on course to win the championship in a Ferrari 1-2, when trouble hit.
Instead of bringing the car into the garage, Calado pitted and handed over to Pier Guidi, who plummeted to last place in the GTE-Pro category.
Calado said that Ferrari engineers had briefed the Italian on the issue before taking over, but their situation was further complicated by skyrocketing oil temperatures that reached as high as 140 degrees Celsius.
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Jakobsen Quickest Rookie in Bahrain Test
Malthe Jakobsen was the quickest rookie in Sunday’s FIA World Endurance Championship post-season test at Bahrain International Circuit.
The newly crowned European Le Mans Series LMP3 champion, in his WEC Hypercar class debut, reeled off a best time of 1:50.222 in the No. 94 Peugeot 9X8.
Jakobsen’s time in the three-hour afternoon session was three-tenths quicker than his best lap from the morning for drivers either new to the series or the category.
ABB FIA Formula E World Championship driver Maximillian Guenther and two-time FIA WTCR champion Yann Ehrlacher, who serves as a Peugeot sim driver, also got seat time in the pair of Peugeots but were slower than the 19-year-old Dane.
Guenther posted a best lap of 1:51.665 in the No. 93 Peugeot, with Ehrlacher at a 1:51.777 in the sister Peugeot, both times which came in the morning.
WEC-nominated Hypercar test driver Lilou Wadoux completed 33 laps in the morning session in the world championship-winning No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid. Wadoux recorded a best lap of 1:50.953.
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