With seven FIA WEC races in the books in 2024, just one remains and it’s coming right up this weekend. Saturday’s eight-hour race at the Bahrain International Circuit neatly bookends the campaign with the second of the two Middle Eastern races, before attention shifts to Season 13.
The 2024 season has been nothing short of remarkable, with the bumper Hypercar class delivering spectacular racing and to this point, six different winners. Will we see a seventh to close out the year? We don’t have to wait much longer to find out.
Only the headline Hypercar titles remain up for grabs heading into the season finale. Pure Rxcing’s stellar run in Fuji, clinched the LMGT3 Drivers’ and Teams’ honours with a second-place finish.
The Hypercar World Cup, for privately entered top class prototypes, has also already been decided, Hertz team Jota’s #12 Porsche sealing the title last time out.
Porsche remains in control in the Hypercar Drivers’, Teams’ and Manufacturers’ points battles, and has a rare chance ahead of it to take a clean sweep. Should it succeed, 2024 will almost certainly go down as Porsche’s year at the top of sportscar tree, after it pocketed nine IMSA titles at Petit Le Mans earlier this month.
“Our team has converted the penalty kick in the IMSA title fight. Now, we also want to win the FIA WEC championship,” says Thomas Laudenbach, vice president of Porsche Motorsport ahead of the weekend.
“We’ve improved considerably in the second year of our global programme and unfailingly made the most of our opportunities. I expect nothing less at the upcoming race weekend in Bahrain. If we approach our mission with the same concentration and consistency as in the previous rounds, then we’ll achieve our goal: 2024 World Champions in the manufacturer and driver categories.”
Porsche believes it is ready to finish the season on a high note, after prepping its works cars at its Mannheim base and rolling them out at the Porsche Development Centre in Weissach before sending them to Bahrain.
So what’s the situation? After the points leaders in the #6 Porsche – André Lotterer, Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor – became the first trio to win two races this year in Japan, they find themselves 35 points clear at the top of the table with 39 still on offer. Essentially, all they need is an eighth-place finish or better to seal it.
The pressure is still on though. One error and it could be ‘game on’, bringing Ferrari’s Le Mans winning #50 crew (Miguel Molina, Antonio Fuoco and Nicklas Nielsen) or Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck De Vries into play in Toyota’s #7 GR010. The Ferrari drivers are 35 points back, while Toyota’s are 37.
Where things could get even more interesting is in the Manufacturers’ title race, which is far from over. Porsche holds a slim 10-point advantage over Toyota and 27-point lead over Ferrari. The #5 Porsche, #8 Toyota and #51 Ferrari crews will need to be just as dialled in as their sister cars, all three have a real opportunity to play their part despite being out of the hunt for Driver honours.
Like Porsche, Ferrari believes it is fully prepared for the task at hand, and has the advantage of coming into the weekend with nothing to lose.
“We would have always liked to have achieved more, but with the (Manufacturers’) championship open is good for us considering what happened during the season,” Ferdinando Cannizzo, Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars, told reporters ahead of race week.
“We’ve tried to prepare for this final race in the best way, we’ve had a couple of days of testing in Barcelona, but clearly winning the championship will not be easy, we need to have a couple of cars on the podium and then we will see. We are looking at this in a positive way.”
As ever, the Balance of Performance table has been updated and for the finale, a few adjustments have been made to the contending cars. Both Ferrari’s and Toyota’s cars have received minor weight reductions, by two and five kilos respectively, and an increase in maximum power figures by 10 and six kW (or, 13 and eight bhp).
Porsche’s 963s meanwhile, will have their minimum weight increased by seven kilos to 1056 and their power upped by two kW to 514 kW.
Looking beyond the title battles, Bahrain looks set to be a significant race for a number of key players in the class.
It’s the last outing for Andre Lotterer in Porsche’s Hypercar squad, and the German has the chance to end his tenure with the Penske outfit on the highest of notes by becoming an FIA World Champion for a second time. In the sister car, it will also be Fred Makowiecki’s final race with the factory squad, following Porsche’s decision to shift to racing with two drivers in both cars in the shorter races next year.
It will be an emotional time for everyone involved in the Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac programme too. The Stephen Mitas-led WEC crew departs after Bahrain, making way for JOTA’s takeover next year after two seasons of service in the WEC.
For Ganassi’s ‘last dance’ with the GM brand, Sebastien Bourdais returns to partner up with the full-season duo of Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber. All three are due to return as Cadillac drivers next year, though we await final confirmation of what their complete 2025 programmes look like with the V-Series.R. Nevertheless, they will be eager to build on Lynn’s stunning pole position in Fuji and convert flashes of speed into a consistent, metronomic run to the podium for the first time this year.
Higher up the pecking order at Cadillac and sister brand Corvette, it’s also a notable weekend. With Laura Wontrop-Klauser, (GM’s sportscar racing boss) and Christie Bagne (Corvette’s GT3 programme manager) both set to leave their posts to take up new roles in General Motors in 2025, Bahrain will be their last race weekend in their current positions.
Wontrop Klauser will be on site, while Bagne – due to illness – has had to stay home.
Nevertheless, both deserve recognition for their hard work behind the scenes at GM’s motorsport division in recent years. They will be sorely missed in the paddock going forward.
At Peugeot, it will be Nico Muller’s final outing in the 9X8 before Malthe Jakobsen steps up to the factory roster and Alpine, off the back of a podium in Japan, will look to capture their first win with a shuffled line-up.
Following Nico Lapierre’s decision to step back from driving, Jules Gounon is back for another weekend in the #35 and Charles Milesi moves over to the #36 crew.
BMW is in a similar situation, it too is searching for a first win after making steady progress with the M Hybrid V8 in the second half of the season.
In LMGT3 class the teams are now playing for pride. Pure Rxcing’s ruthless pace over the season saw them capture the titles last time out, leaving the other teams to fight over the other spots in the championship table. While Pure Rxcing hasn’t won every race, its run of two wins and four further podiums in seven races was enough to clinch the championship comfortably.
Five cars have won races this year; only Manthey’s Porsches have won twice. And with the field steadily improving each race and the gap between the top and bottom of the pecking order closing, there’s a real opportunity for a team to step forward for the first time and impress as the curtain comes down on the season.
Was Vista AF Corse’s big win in Fuji a turning point for the 296 LMGT3 programme? Can Heart of Racing bag a second victory for the 2024-spec Vantage? Will United Autosports (McLaren), TF Sport (Corvette), AKKODIS ASP (Lexus), Iron Dames (Lamborghini) or Proton Competition (Ford) find a way to deliver their brand’s first LMGT3 win? Time will tell.
And with so much up in the air for 2025 in this rapidly evolving new category, there are so many question marks overhanging the class as we approach the last day of school.
Could this be Rossi’s last ride with WRT? Is D’Station about to say goodbye to the championship? Will the Iron Dames return with Lamborghini or head elsewhere for a new-look programme? How many of the 18 Bronze drivers will return with the cost of competing rising fast?
The only thing we know for sure at this stage is that there’s a glut of teams and drivers desperate to impress before the off-season – and the subsequent scramble for space on the grid in 2025 – begins…
