Brendon Hartley was buoyed to have taken pole position for the Six Hours of Bahrain on Friday, as it meant he was able to take his first WEC pole position in just over two years.
Hartley outqualified team-mate Kamui Kobayashi to lead a Toyota one-two in qualifying for the penultimate round of the 2021 season.
It marks the first pole for Hartley and the #8 Toyota since the Six Hours of Fuji in October of 2019. Since then, the #7 car has steadily been the fastest of the two, while both Rebellion Racing and Alpine also took pole positions of their own.
Hartley ultimately ended his dry spell on Friday afternoon with a best time of 01:47:049.
“It was a nice lap,” Hartley told MotorsportWeek.com. “I was probably a bit conservative in the first two sectors. We had a few little front lockings in the free practices.”
“So we knew we had to keep it tidy on the first part of the lap, but also knowing that if you don’t take everything out of the tyre, it was going to be a bit more for the last sector. It was a really good feeling.”
Hartley came close to ending his dry spell earlier in the year, but was beaten out in Portimao, Monza and at Le Mans.
“We’ve been so close to position a few times. Even in Le Mans I was on for the pole lap when I had the traffic with the Glickenhaus in the last corner. Monza – I pretty much thought we’re on pole and then Jose [Maria Lopez] came on the last 30 seconds.
“So it’s been so tight between the cars all the time, but they’ve just nipped us. And when we were ahead [in Portimao] the Alpine actually took the pole. So yeah, it’s actually been a long time coming to get that pole position and it feels really nice.”
Despite the qualifying success, Friday at Bahrain was far from clean sailing for the #8 Toyota following contact with one of the Iron Lynx Ferraris in the second free practice session.
“I guess the worry was the mechanics not being able to get it fixed in time for FP3,” Hartley explained. “Okay, we lost 15 minutes of running, which wasn’t the end of the world. We’ve all had plenty of laps around Bahrain before.”
The real worry was was missing the track time and FP3, which I think if that had happened, I don’t think we would be chatting about pole position right now. You need the track time.”
“It was a really nice job by the mechanics to work under those conditions and get the car ready just in time for the start of FP3. It was really a matter of seconds before the FP3 started that they had the car finished.”
