8H Bahrain: Too big a handicap 🎥
BUEMIS TOYOTA CHANCENLOS Sébastien Buemi won at Le Mans with his two partners. But the ballast of success at the world championship finale in Bahrain was too much for their car. Their teammates took victory and the world championship title. The only battles for positions were in LMP2 and the two GT classes, as the highlights from Bahrain show. Sébastien Buemi and [...]
The only battles for positions took place in LMP2 and the two GT classes, as the highlights from Bahrain show.
Sébastien Buemi and his two regular partners Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley paid the price for their victory at Le Mans two months ago. The handicap imposed on the world championship-leading Toyota TS050 Hybrid compared with its sister car was too great from the outset.
Repeat offender
As a result, Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi were ahead from start to finish under floodlights on the Bahrain GP circuit. The team with the Swiss kept up the gentle pressure over the entire distance but still had to concede defeat by around a minute after 263 laps.
The same finish at the top was seen a year ago at the same venue when the eight-hour race in the desert state counted as the fourth round of the cross-season FIA World Endurance Championship 2019/20. As an exception, the WEC squad, which has been decimated by Rebellion Racing and other teams, made another stop in Bahrain to fill up the WEC calendar with another race outside Europe.
Some at Le Mans, others in the WRC
The winning trio from Bahrain 1 & 2 had to admit defeat twice in a row at Le Mans with a lot of bad luck, but are now celebrating their first title win in the drivers' standings. Only five points separate the two Toyota teams.
In the team classification, Toyota Gazoo Racing had already been crowned world champion, as had Rebellion Racing in second place. Like Fernando Alonso before him, the Argentine Lopez thus managed to pin a world championship title in two different categories (FIA WTCC and now FIA WEC) to his banner.
Buemi remained realistic
The dethroned world endurance champion from Aigle took his narrow defeat in stride. Especially as he never made a secret of the fact that he rates the three Le Mans victories of 2018, 2019 and 2020 higher than anything else.
Sébastien Buemi: "Congratulations to our teammates who delivered a flawless race. We did our best, but our handicap for success was too big. We knew that we were about half a second slower on average per lap and therefore had no real chance of winning. That's life - sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I still enjoyed the last laps with the TS050 Hybrid."
More fights in the other classes
Overall positions 3 to 7 went to five of the six LMP2 teams. The top four were only 28 seconds apart at the finish.
The Swiss-French team Cool Racing with the Genevese Antonin Borga, Alexandre Coigny and dual citizen Nicolas Lapierre decided not to make the trip to Bahrain.
Double victory for Porsche, world championship title for Aston Martin
Porsche Motorsport celebrated a double victory in the GT works car category. However, the world championship title goes to Aston Martin in the manufacturers' and drivers' championships.
The triumph of the second car and the third place of the Danes Nicki Thiim/Marco Sörensen, victorious in Bahrain and the WRC, at Le Mans, where record winner Porsche failed to score a podium, paid off in full for the British team.
As the only Swiss in the GT sports cars, the Grisons-based aviation entrepreneur Thomas Flohr finished fourth in the Am class in Bahrain in a Ferrari 488. Despite support from professionals Francesco Castellacci and Giancarlo Fisichella, he remained without a podium in the season that has just ended.
Results 8 Hours of Bahrain 2020
World championship final standings LMP drivers
