Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa have won the FIA World Endurance Championship’s season finale, the 8 Hours of Bahrain, and with it the manufacturers world title for Toyota.
The trio, driving the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, started the race on pole. Buemi, in the car at the start, retained the lead, from the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of Antonio Giovinazzi, who had overtaken Mike Conway in the sister #7 Toyota, who had started second.
However, while Conway dropped further back behind Julien Andlauer, onboard the #99 Proton Porsche 963, all was not well at the front for Buemi.
Amid the first pass around lapped LMGT3 cars, he caught Hiroshi Koizumi in the #82 TF Sport Corvette Z06 GT3R. Despite thinking he’d given “enough space”, as he later said in the post-race press conference, Buemi was clipped by the bronze-rated Koizumi.
The Toyota was spun around, and although the car was undamaged, Buemi dropped to seventh, losing around eight seconds.
Ferrari and Porsche lead
This promoted Giovinazzi to the lead, with Andlauer second and Will Stevens third in the #12 JOTA Porsche 963.
Andlauer couldn’t keep up with Giovinazzi’s pace, and he soon dropped off the back of the Ferrari, and 25 minutes after Buemi’s spin, he was 5 and a half seconds back. However, in that time, Stevens had caught Andlauer. The two battled, with Stevens eventually getting the best of the Frenchman at turn 1, demoting him to second.
Stevens then set about catching Giovinazzi, with the gap slowly coming down to 4 seconds. At the first round of pit stops, fast work in the pits from the JOTA crew enabled Stevens to jump the Italian, with a gap of around 7 seconds to the good over the Ferrari.
Giovinazzi, though, is no slouch, and over the next hour his relentless pace enabled him to catch, and eventually past, Stevens.
Behind the two leaders, Conway sat third, and Buemi had worked his way past, over the previous hour, #15 BMW M Hybrid V8’s Marco Wittmann, the sister #20 BMW of Rene Rast, and Proton’s Andlauer, to put him back into fourth position.
Meanwhile, the #5 Porsche of Matt Campbell, and then Michael Christensen after Campbell’s 2 hour stint, was making progress up the field. Through the virtue of an early stop, the car moved up into second by the end of the second pitstop cycle going into the third hour of the race, with James Calado leading, having replaced Antonio Giovinazzi in the #51 Ferrari. Norman Nato sat third behind the wheel of the #12 JOTA Porsche 963, with the two Toyotas of Hartley, in the #8 car, and Kamui Kobayashi in the #7, fourth and fifth.
For the next hour, positions stabilised, with only Kobayashi losing fifth to Robin Frijns in the #20 BMW, then regaining it again towards the end.
Toyota return to the front, but issues start to appear
Calado led for much of his stint, but after the next round of stops, Kobayashi began to unleash the Toyota’s pace. It was now dark in Bahrain, with the sun setting at around 5pm in the late afternoon, which helped the track to cool and improve tyre degradation, meaning the drivers could push more without fear of ruining the rubber.
Subsequently, Kobayashi moved swiftly through the field, and was second mid-way through the fourth hour of the race, having overtaken his teammate Hartley, plus Christensen and Nato in the Porsches. Next up was Calado, who’d led for almost all his stint apart from a brief period as the pitstop cycle took a few laps to shake out.
Kobayashi, though, was on a mission. By the time they pitted to be replaced by their teammates, he’d caught up to within a second, but couldn’t find a way past the Briton in the scarlet Ferrari. It wasn’t all plain sailing for the Toyota, though. Earlier Kobayashi had experienced a strange loss of power, and was re-passed by Nato. Although he soon got back up to speed and passed Nato for the second time in his pursuit of Calado, it was worrying for Toyota, who needed to win the race in order to win the manufacturers’ championship.
The pistops, though, once again changed everything. As Nyck de Vries got into the Toyota, he was able to jump the #51 Ferrari, now with rapid Italian Alessandro Pier Guidi at the wheel. This gave de Vries a lead of three and a half seconds, but the Toyota’s power issue — later revealed to be a misfire — raised its head again, and Pier Guidi soon was able to catch and pass the Dutchman.
While the Toyota seemed to have temperamental reliability, it was rapid when all working correctly. De Vries stayed within two seconds of the Ferrari initially, sometimes catching to well within a second. But, the problems soon started again, and de Vries started to lose multiple seconds a lap.
Soon, both Fred Makowiecki, in the #5 Porsche 963, and Callum Ilott, in the #12 JOTA Porsche, had both passed de Vries with very little trouble, demoting the Dutchman to fourth. Raffaele Marciello, in the #15 BMW, was next in fifth, and he too soon caught and passed the struggling Toyota.
Safety cars bunch everyone up
Back at the front, Pier Guidi was still leading, increasing his gap to Makowiecki and Ilott. When they next pitted, it stood at around 12 seconds, with Ilott and further three seconds back from Makowiecki, and Marciello in fourth.
Ilott jumped Makowiecki at the stops, but it was close, with less than a second in it between the two Porsches. However, it wasn’t long until the race’s first real neutralisation occurred — there had been a very briefly full course yellow earlier to recover debris — as the #88 Proton Ford Mustang GT3 of Gianmarco Levarato had caught fire and stopped on track, necessitating a virtual safety car for the Mustang to be safely recovered.
At the same time, Dries Vanthoor in the #15 BMW had spun at turn 1, and although he’d managed to recover, this lost him a few positions.
When the race restarted with 2 hours and 12 minutes remaining, every Hypercar in the top 10 had pitted. The order now was Ilott leading, with Giovinazzi, back in the #51 Ferrari, second, Makowiecki third, Hirakawa in the #8 Toyota fourth, and D. Vanthoor, whose spin had been saved by the safety car, in fifth. Prospective drivers world champions, the #6 Porsche of Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer stood sixth after a difficult race so far for them.
De Vries, meanwhile, was still struggling with an intermittently misfiring engine, and had dropped to 13th.
With the track green again, it didn’t take long for Giovinazzi to pass Ilott and take the lead back. However, the race restart didn’t last long. The #94 Peugeot 9X8, with Paul di Resta at the wheel, broke down and stopped on drivers’ left just after turn 10, on the back straight, and again required a virtual safety car to be safely recovered.
At the same time, the other Proton Ford Mustang, the #77, had also broken down, with a suspiciously similar issue to what had befallen the sister car an hour earlier.
Giovinazzi didn’t pit under this safety car, but others did, putting L. Vanthoor in the #6 Porsche second, his younger brother D. Vanthoor third in the #15 BMW, the #50 Ferrari 499P of Nicklas Nielsen fourth, and Matt Campbell, who had resumed the driver’s seat in the #5 Porsche fifth. The #8 Toyota, meanwhile, was 10th with Sebastien Buemi back at the wheel for the final hour and a half of the race.
Buemi shows his mettle
With the track now relatively cool as it hadn’t had direct sunlight on for a few hours, and well rubbered-in, it was time to push. Buemi did just that, moving through the field at pace. Giovinazzi, meanwhile, began to slowly pull away from L. Vanthoor in the #6 Porsche, as D. Vanthoor, Nielsen, and Campbell jostled for positions behind.
Buemi, though, was on a tear. With an hour remaining, he was fourth, helped by Nicklas Nielsen pitting the #50 Ferrari for the final time and handing over to Antonio Fuoco. After the final stops, thanks to quick work in the pits from both the Porsche and Toyota teams, both Campbell and Buemi leapfrogged Giovinazzi. He’d also been jumped by Jenson Button, in the #38 JOTA Porsche for the final stint, and Peugeot’s Mikkel Jensen, in the #93 9X8.
Buemi left the pits two seconds adrift of Campbell in the #5 Porsche. However, Buemi had four new hard tyres, while Campbell had old tyres. In the end, it was inevitable that the Toyota driver would catch the Australian, and that he did, putting an aggressive move down the inside of the Porsche at turn 8, forcing Campbell wide and consolidating the position.
Buemi, then, roared off into the distance to take the chequered flag, sealing the race win and the manufacturers world championship for Toyota. Giovinazzi, meanwhile, had caught and passed Button, and then Jensen, putting the Ferrari back on the podium.
However, there was a question mark surrounding Ferrari’s tyre usage, and the fact they may have overused their tyre allocation. On the final lap, Giovinazzi passed Campbell for second, but in post-race scrutineering, the car was given a 4 minute 55 second penalty, dropping the car to the back of the Hypercar field, in 14th.
Race result run-down
So, in the end, Campbell finished second in the #5 Porsche alongside his teammates Fred Makowiecki and Michael Christensen. In third was the #93 Peugeot 9X8 of Mikkel Jensen, Nico Muller, and Jean-Eric Vergne, who due to Ferrari’s penalty only coming after the podium celebrations, meant Peugeot could not celebrate on the podium with Toyota and Porsche.
In fourth was the #35 Alpine of Paul-Loup Chatin, Ferdinand Habsburg, and Jules Gounon. They started well out of the top 10 but made it through the field, helped out, like many, by the two safety cars late on in the race.
The #15 BMW of Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello and Marco Wittmann finished fifth. Unfortunately, BMW were not able to outscore Alpine, and so this meant Alpine won the battle for fourth in the manufacturers standings, six points ahead of BMW. Peugeot finished sixth, a further 7 points adrift.
The #2 Cadillac V-Series.R of Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Sebastien Bourdais finished sixth, followed by the #38 JOTA Porsche of Jenson Button, Phil Hanson and Oliver Rasmussen. In eighth was the satellite #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Robert Shwartzman, while the #36 Alpine of Mick Schumacher, Charles Milesi, and Matthieu Vaxiviere finished ninth.
The new world drivers champions, Andre Lotterer, Laurens Vanthoor, and Kevin Estre struggled in the final stint of the race with L. Vanthoor at the wheel, and rounded out the top 10, scoring two points.
But this was enough to win the title, as both their rivals, the #50 Ferrari and #7 Toyota, which retired from the race after the misfire issue, did not score enough points to take the title — in fact, neither of them scored points, as the Ferrari, with Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina was 11th.
12th and 13th were the #12 JOTA Porsche of Will Stevens, Callum Ilott and Norman Nato. The car had run well early on, leading for a period of time and was well in the top 10, but came unstuck when Stevens outbraked himself at turn 1 towards the end of the race and dropped down the order. However, they sealed the FIA World Cup for Hypercar Teams — the privateer teams championship — at Fuji in September, giving them something to celebrate.
13th was the #99 Proton Porsche 963 of Julien Andlauer, Neel Jani and Harry Tincknell, while the #51 Ferrari was last of the finishers thanks to its penalty for overusing its tyre allocation.
