Thursday night’s heavy fog in Bahrain fortunately cleared in time for this morning’s third WEC free practice session of the weekend, giving teams and drivers a final chance to hone their set-ups ahead of this afternoon’s qualifying.
The GTE Pro title battle continues to look very finely poised for Sunday’s six-hour race. A hard-charging (though not in driver’s championship contention) Patrick Pilet was the early pace-setter in the #91 911, setting first a 1:59.8 and then a 1:59.3 early in the session, and also recovering from a dramatic run wide at one point.
Aston Martin were not to be left behind, however: Bruno Senna got the #99 car under the two-minute mark with a 1:59:097 about 20 minutes in. Championship contender Richard Lietz then came on strong in the closing minutes – his time in the #92 Porsche just four-thousandths slower than Senna’s earlier effort.
This furious back-and-forth left Ferrari looking a little in the shade, although Gianmaria Bruni was not too far behind the class leaders at 2:00.083 – making the #51 458 the only one of the six GTE Pro cars not to dip below two minutes in this session.
In GTE Am, the all-Danish #95 Aston Martin continued to show well, but the #88 Proton Competition Porsche has improved since Thursday. Paolo Ruberti’s 2:00.4 bested Aston man Niki Thiim’s 2:00.7, while a further two-tenths back was Matt Griffin in the #61 AF Corse Ferrari.
As in the previous sessions, the LMP1 class saw one car set a fast time early in the session that wouldn’t be bettered for the duration. This time it was Loic Duval in the #2 Audi taking the honours, stopping the clock at 1:42.4. His closest challenger was Stephan Sarrazin in the #8 Toyota, who recorded a 1:43.871 to just pip Lotterer’s time in the other Audi with 15 minutes to go.
Rebellion Racing continued to run consistently, but several seconds off the pace of the works cars, and Mathias Beche seemed to have an intermittent mechanical problem with the car mid-way through the session.
LMP2 looks to be as close as GTE Pro, with Oak Racing, ADR-Delta and Pecom continuing to trade fastest times. John Martin in the G-Drive-sponsored #26 ADR-Delta Oreca topped this session with a time of 1:50.341, but Pierre Kaffer put the Pecom Oreca second and just a tenth of a second slower. Robbie Kerr at the wheel of the #25 ADR-Delta machine backed up his team-mates in the #26 car with the third-fastest time, while the #24 Oak of Alex Brundle, Martin Plowman and David Heinemeier-Hansson just missed out on the top three, circulating three-tenths slower than Kerr.
On-track incidents were again few and far between this morning, but the #8 Toyota knocked the plastic bollard at the apex of turn 10 over about 10 minutes in, requiring a short red-flag period to allow marshals to retrieve it. Elsewhere, a coming-together between Roman Rusinov in the #26 G-Drive Oreca and Marc Lieb in the #91 Porsche brought the yellows out in the final five minutes, but both cars escaped serious damage.
Stephen Errity (@83ste)
