Toyota GAZOO Racing’s No. 7 of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez took an easy win Saturday (Nov. 12) in the BAPCO 8 Hours of Bahrain, the final race of the FIA World Endurance Championship season. It is the team’s second win of the year and fourth for Toyota as a whole.
Entering the race, the championship was a dead heat between Toyota GAZOO Racing’s No. 8 for Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa and the Signatech Alpine grandfathered LMP1 entry for Nicolas Lapierre, Andre Negrao and Matthieu Vaxiviere. However, the Signatech squad struggled with pace for the entire weekend. As a result, the championship battle was not really competitive.
The Peugeots were once again very quick. The No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 with Paul di Resta at the wheel was very strong early on, hassling Buemi for the overall lead before dropping back. Unfortunately, Peugeot’s chances at a great finish ended when the transmission turned traitor. The No. 93 started losing gears and fell way down the order. Eventually, the car was retired from the race.
The No. 94 Peugeot was plagued by electrical issues. The car stalled multiple times on Loic Duval, forcing him to pull off and completely reset the car.
The effective pass for the win occurred on lap 96 early in the fourth hour. Here, Conway was able to get past Hartley shortly after a round of stops. Once out front, Conway was able to pull away from his teammate to the point that the only time that the No. 7 was out of the lead for the rest of the race was due to pit stop sequences en route to the win.
The No. 7 Toyota won by 45.471 seconds over Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa. The Signatech Alpine ended up third, two laps down at the finish. The No. 94 Peugeot of Duval, Gustavo Menezes and Nico Mueller ended up six laps down in fourth.
The second-place finish for Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa was enough for them to win the title by four points over Signatech Alpine. The eight-hour race length means that the event was worth 150% of normal points. Normally, finishing second to your rival’s third-place finish would have been a three-point difference.
In LMP2, RealTeam by WRT’s Ferdinand Habsburg started on pole, but lost his advantage on the first lap to United Autosports’ Filipe Albuquerque. Early on, the two United Autosports entries dominated. However, Team WRT’s No. 31 with Rene Rast at the wheel slowly rose into contention.
On lap 72 halfway through the third hour, Rast was able to take the…
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