Toyota Gazoo Racing continued their clean sweep of top slots in the double header at Bahrain International Circuit as Brendon Hartley topped Thursday evening’s 90 minute FP1 in the #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 with a lap in 1:48.490, four tenths up on Kamui Kobayashi in the sister #7 Toyota.
Nico Lapierre completed a HyperCar 1,2,3 in the #36 Alpine, a second off the session-topping time with temperatures noticeably cooler than last week, though still in the high 20s Celsius.
LMP2 saw the #70 RealTeam Racing Oreca lead the way with Norman Nato, whose left foot injury is healing well posting a 1:50.792, edging out the best time from Tom Blomqvist in the #28 JOTA car by just 0.028 of a second.
Giedo van der Garde was next up, under two tenths off in the #29 Racing Team Nederland car, the two TDS Racing Pro-Am LMP2 cars in the top three.
In GTE Pro the Ferrari pair did not take to the track for over half an hour of the session and, thereafter, did not post representative times, trailing all of the GTE AM field, this after a pre-weekend BoP adjustment failed to raise smiles in the Prancing Horse stable.
That left Porsche to post the top two times, Neel Jani in the #92 with a 1:57.657 ahead of Richard Lietz in the sister #91 911 RSR-19.
Augusto Farfus topped GTE AM in the #98 AMR enter Vantage, a 1:58.093 topping Matteo Cairoli’s best in the #56 Team Project 1 Porsche by just under a quarter of a second with Cetilar Racing’s Antonio Fuoco third quickest in the fastest of the Ferraris, the #47 GTE Am car two seconds faster than the faster of the two Pro class 488s.
DSC says – Unless it emerges that any cars off the pace are nursing some sort of issue, or there is any official statement from any party involved, this is the last we’ll be writing about any assumed protest ref BoP – It’s been a long hard year and we’ll save our energies for those that are turning up to race.
