6H Bahrain: Perfect day for Porsche and Toyota 🎥
DOUBLE WIN With a double win, Toyota secured the world championship title early at the Bahrain 6 Hours. While Sébastien Buemi had to settle for second place, Neel Jani celebrated with Porsche in the GT class.
Six hours of racing summarized in less than six minutes.
With an air temperature of up to 35 degrees Celsius and an even considerably hotter track surface, the fifth race of the season on the Bahrain GP circuit developed into the expected heat battle. The victory of Toyota Gazoo Racing in the Hypercar class and Porsche Motorsport in the GT cars was never in danger. Both manufacturers settled the success internally among themselves.
Buemi team behind
Sébastien Buemi, who started from pole position, managed to defend the lead against the sister car in his start turn. A pit stop that was too long for a tire change and the slightly higher wear of the rubber brought the decision after four hours to the disadvantage of the car with the Vaudois driver.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López in the Toyota GR010 Hybrid won after 185 laps with a 51.4-second lead over the sister car driven by Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley. Third place went to Team Alpine. Toyota is thus the first world champion of the new hypercar era. In the drivers' standings, the winners of Le Mans and now Bahrain lead by 15 points over their teammates.
Now Neel Jani can become GT world champion
In the GT cars, Neel Jani from Biel and Frenchman Kévin Estre won their Porsche 911 RSR by seven tenths of a second after six hours against fellow factory drivers Gianmaria Bruni from Italy and Richard Lietz from Austria. Unlike recently at Le Mans, the two AF Corse Ferrari cars had no real chance against the German sports cars.
With their third win of the season and the extra point for pole position, Estre and Jani were able to reduce the gap in the drivers' championship to a single point ahead of next Saturday's final 8-hour race in Bahrain. In the manufacturers' standings, Porsche regained the lead from Ferrari.
Neel Jani: "It couldn't have been better. We were very close to our sister car throughout the race. Only at the very end did they stop attacking us. For us, first place is enormously important in order to have the best starting position in the drivers' world championship in the finale. In a week's time we'll give our all at the season finale to win all the titles."
In the GTE-Am teams, Thomas Flohr and Rahel Frey finished 7th and 8th with their Ferrari teams.
No podium for Fabio Scherer
In the fiercely contested LMP2 class, the Belgian team WRT with the trio Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi set the tone. For Fabio Scherer and his partners Filipe Albuquerque and Phil Hanson, the podium was within reach.
However, a slight collision by the Portuguese and a subsequent time penalty threw them back to fourth position, just eight seconds behind third place. The chances of winning the world championship title are now merely theoretical for Scherer's United Autosports team.
