Toyota took a dominant 1-2 in the 2021 6 Hours of Bahrain, the penultimate round of the FIA WEC season in the sweltering heat at the Sakhir Circuit.
Taking the win was the #7 GR010 of championship leaders Jose Maria Lopez, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, who were rarely challenged by the sister #8 which struggled with tyre degradation throughout the race and lost time to a slow pit stop. Early in the race the two Toyotas traded the lead multiple times, though the swaps were orchestrated by the team as it attempted to work out which car had the outright pace to win on the day. Once the #7 took control in Hour 2 the race result never felt in doubt, and the Japanese OEM claimed the World Manufacturer’s title in Le Mans Hypercar.
“Great job by all my teammates,” said Conway post-race. “All the pit stops for us were flawless, we needed to win this one. If we get pole next weekend, it’s still all to play for.” With one race to go, there is a 15-point gap between the #7 and #8 crews, with the #7 trio leading the way in the Driver’s standings.
Alpine meanwhile, finished third, a lap behind, a valiant effort from Matthieu Vaxiviere, Andre Negrao and Nicolas Lapierre not enough to challenge for the win, especially with the team forced to run shorter stints than Toyota. In the opening hour of the race throttle issues and later an unfortunately timed FCY period lost the team time which ultimately it would never recover. During Hour 4, the #8’s slow stop briefly vaulted the Alpine to second, but Brendon Hartley made short work of Matthieu Vaxiviere on the pit straight to retake the place.
As has often been the case this season, LMP2 and GTE Am provided the most entertainment in the race, as like Hypercar, GTE Pro was a rather quiet affair, with Porsche taking a comfortable win over AF Corse.
The German marque finished 1-2 with its #92 911 RSR leading the #91 home. AF Corse had warned before the sessions started that it would be down on power after the pre-event BoP change, and through qualifying and the race itself, this certainly seemed to be the case.
The #51 Ferrari of James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi, which led the championship heading into the race, finished third, but 35 seconds behind the second of the Porsches. During the mid point of the race, Calado looked capable of catching the #91 and breaking up the Porsche strangle hold, but the Porsche drivers were being told to save fuel and tyres at the time, and pulled away again later in the race.
The biggest storyline to emerge from Pro is the state of the title race heading into the finale. Kevin Estre and Neel Jani’s win has put them within a single point of Calado and Pier Guidi heading into the finale. If the organisers can get the BoP right, it could be an exciting end to the season.
WRT was the best of the bunch in LMP2. Superb performances in the opening hours from Ferdinand Habsburg and Robin Frijns, fresh from their last-gasp Le Mans win, saw the team take the lead from eighth on the grid gave the Belgian team a platform to hold station until the end while the remaining contenders squabbled for the remaining podium places.
Second and third were not decided until late in the race, JOTA’s Tom Blomqvist, who started from pole, fought hard and muscled past Filipe Albuquerque to hand the #28 crew second. Then in the closing stages, Albuqeurque fell to fourth after Antonio Felix Da Costa in the sister JOTA entry dived up the inside at Turn 1 with just over 10 minutes to go, to make it a double podium for the British team.
Inter Europol looked set to fight for a podium spot all the way to the end, but after a strong stint from Alex Brundle early in the race, complimented by a faultless run from Kuba Schmiechowski, it all unravelled. Renger Van Der Zande, in Hour 5, was clattered hard at Turn 1 by a hard-charging Filipe Albuqeurque in the #22 United ORECA, just before Brundle was installed for the end.
“I felt like a stuntman driving back for a while,” explained Van Der Zande to WEC TV. “We were off sequence with the tyres, so I was on old ones and sliding a lot in my stint, I didn’t see him coming, we lost a lot of time. Overtaking is an art, but this wasn’t a good one. It didn’t make sense to me.”
After the spin, Brundle climbed aboard and lost further time due to the driver door opening while he was out on track, multiple times. Then to make matters worse, the race officials handed the team a four-minute stop and hold for a tyre allocation infringement, dropping the Polish team from a podium place to a distant ninth in class.
Racing Team Nederland was also competitive in the first half of the race, courtesy of yet another signature charge from Geido van der Garde who snatched the lead on the opening lap and tried to gap the field. As is often the case, Frits van Eerd later in the race was unable to keep pace with the Silver drivers in the field, and the team dropped back. But a fifth place finish and a win in the Pro/Am category was a well deserved outcome.
GTE Am meanwhile saw a heroic effort from Ben Keating set up a TF Sport victory. The Texan, as he has been in the past in Bahrain, was the class of the Bronze drivers in the field, and kept the team in contention while he burned through his drive time early in the race in amongst higher-ranked company. His efforts meant that Felipe Fraga and Dylan Pereira were able to take control to the flag.
“I’m really proud of the TF Sport team, we didn’t qualify that well, but we had a better race car,” he said after his stint. “Our car isn’t very good at getting the peak out of the tyre for one lap, but as long as you take care of them you can do decent times at the end of the stint.”
In the final hour, Matt Campbell on a charge looked in with a shot at snatching the win for Dempsey Proton after a quiet outing in the #77. But his pace against Fraga wasn’t quite quick enough to reel the Brazilian in and make the pass before the end. Instead, Campbell crossed the line just five seconds back.
Third on the road was Team Project 1 after Matteo Cairoli was involved in a lengthy battle with Marcos Gomes in the #98 Aston Martin at the end of Hour 5. In the end Cairoli was able to take third from the Aston crew, which had been in and around the podium places for the entire six hours.
For the championship leaders in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari, it was a tough outing in which all three drivers struggled for outright pace. Francois Perrodo, Nicklass Nielsen and Alessio Rovera would finish fifth.
Elsewhere in the hotly-contested Am class, on a day in which the Vantage AMR appeared to be the car to have, the D’Station Racing Vantage had a hugely disappointing outing, finishing 11th. After leading the race in the opening stint following an astonishing drive from 10th to the lead by Tomonobo Fujii, the team’s chances of victory were dashed when the engine cover blew off, before the team was forced to bring the car in for a long bout of repairs to the front end.
