Next week’s race–the season finale–will feature battles for supremacy in multiple divisions.
SAKIR, Bahrain—Lemans Hypercar winners Toyota Gazoo Racing had no difficulties on Saturday at the Sakir International Circuit Saturday as Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez took their second consecutive win in the Rapco Six Hours of Bahrain. The win over their Toyota rivals extended their lead in the drivers’ championship by 15 points going into next week’s final race. The Alpine team took third.
With this victory as a manufacturer, Toyota clinches the championship for the eighth time.
The two Toyotas battled each other in the opening hour as the second car–piloted by Sebastian Buemi, Kaz Nakajima, and Brendon Hartley–took the lead but lost it to Conway before regaining the lead again at the end of the first hour. But Conway was more consistent and took the lead for good afterward. Kobayashi finished the last hour and kept his team ahead.
It was an all-day battle in the LMP 2 group. The Dutch Racing Team Nederland led early but fell back midway through giving their neighbor WRT the lead. Robin Frijins, Ferdinand Habsburg-Lothringen, and Charles Milesi kept the lead over the two British JOTA cars. It is the second consecutive win for the Belgian team that also triumphed recently at the 24 Hours of Lemans. Team Nederland now leads the championship over the American Dragonspeed squad by nine points going into the final race next week.
The GTE PRO category wasn’t an exciting affair. The Porsche of Kevin Estre and Neel Jani won the race from start to finish, even though their sister car driven by Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz got close in the final hour. Because Estre and Jani are in the lead for the championship in the driver’s category, the Bruni and Lietz team held off and took second. The AF Corse cars finished third and fourth and now trail the Porsches by one point. That sets up an all-out battle next week.
TF Sport, driven by American Ben Keating, Dylan Pereira, and Felipe Fraga, took the GTE AM division in what turned out to be the most exciting competition of the day.
Next week, the teams will race for an additional two hours, a challenge given already high temperatures.
