With the season finale at Yas Marina starting at 16:30 local time in Abu Dhabi (12:30 GMT), the potential championship winners in all three classes are still to be determined.
And beyond that, the championship-winning teams in LMP2 and GT will receive the trophies and the ‘golden ticket’ of an automatic invitation to the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans.
In LMP2, early race dramas for the #30 RD Limited car and a thrilling 1-2 finish for the Algarve Pro Racing Orecas make the points positions pretty simple.
If the #25 car finishes fifth or better they take the crown no matter what. The sister #20 car must finish second or win to have any chance with a 16-point deficit to the sister #25.
RD Limited meanwhile, who picked up an early race puncture after running over a fastening pin from a circuit recovery vehicle, need to win and hope that neither APR car makes it to the finish. Injecting just a little more drama into proceedings this is currently the only 2025 campaign for RD Limited, an oversubscribed ELMS saw them not granted an entry.
The dramas in yesterday’s race for the #35 Ultimate Ligier and the #49 High Class Racing Car remarkably still leaves four of the seven-car field with a chance to clinch the title (though no Le Mans auto-invitation applies for the LMP3 teams).
Bretton Racing now lead the way with 85 points, Ultimate are five behind. The team’s efforts to get the damaged #35 back on track yesterday could well prove to be decisive!
Two wins in a row from RLR MSport put them on 75, third in the order and 10 points from the Championship leaders – very much in the hunt.
And a DNF for the High Class Racing car, which came perilously close to a withdrawal from today’s race before a replacement gearbox was sourced overnight, sees the Danish-flagged car on 67 points and hoping for dramas for those ahead in the order!
GT too saw drama for the championship-leading car yesterday the #81 Winward Racing AMG taking serious damage from a clash with the #35 Ligier.
The crew finished work on the car at 6 am this morning and they are ready to go for the race.
Their DNF though saw the points lead change hands, the win from the #92 Manthey EMA Porsche put that crew to the front, 70 points to 61 for both the #81 Winward AMG, and the sister #10 Manthey Porsche.
Saturday’s race then saw a further eight cars eliminated from the potential to take the title – but there are plenty of cars in the mix that could make life tricky for the three title contenders.
Some minor BoP changes overnight have seen a slight weight increase for the Porsches, Aston Martins and Ferraris, though the 296 GT3s have also had a small turbo boost increase. The AMGs remain untouched, that could be a factor too!
So will it be a third Manthey-run Porsche (in addition to the pair of full-season WEC LM GT3s) or a fourth Mercedes AMG (in addition to the pair of full-season Iron Lynx WEC cars and a third Iron Lynx. machine taking up the auto invitation won by the team with their 2024 ELMS title won with Lamborghini)?
With the withdrawal before Saturday’s race of the #14 Climax AMG (Driver unwell) and from today’s race from the #46 QMMF by Herberth Porsche (chassis damage from opening lap accident on Saturday) there should be 45 cars for the four-hour finale.
