Spotted in the paddock
As the 2025 season winds down, preparations for 2026 and beyond are ramping up this week in Bahrain.
In the paddock, several key faces have been present. The headline is the sight of the incoming team principal for the McLaren Hypercar effort, James Barclay. He is on site this weekend with a small team ahead of the manufacturer’s 2027 debut in the top class.
Felipe Nasr is on site this weekend as the designated reserve driver for Porsche Penske Motorsport in their final WEC outing.
And a number of the drivers set to participate in the Rookie Test are beginning to filter in, with DSC bumping into newly minted ELMS champion Ollie Gray, who will test the title-winning car. Alex West from Garage 59, who will run in a United GT3 Evo, has been seen, as has Robert de Haan, the reigning Carrera Cup Deutschland champion, who is set to test the Proton Porsche.
In addition to West, fellow Garage 59 team co-owners Andrew Kirkaldy and Chris Goodwin are also here observing ahead of taking the role of McLaren LMGT3 service provider.
Chris and Alex Buncombe are present too, supporting close friend Jenson Button for his final pro race start.
2016 FIA WEC champion Marc Lieb is also on site to conduct his now regular duties as a member of Porsche’s senior communications staff. He’s had his hands full, with Porsche, Penske and Proton competition under virtual siege as members of the media pack attempt to get the latest progress on the potential for Porsche to return to Hypercar in 2026 in some capacity.
On that subject, various political answers are in play, including a suggestion that the IMSA championship-winning car might be allowed to take up a Le Mans invitation despite the potential no-show of the factory team in the World Championship. DSC understands that this is on a list of the least likely scenarios, but never say never.
Bourdais not thinking about manufacturers’ title battle
Coming into the finale, Cadillac is a contender for the Manufacturers’ World Championship, but its chances of sealing the deal are slim. The US manufacturer sits 61 points off Ferrari; it’s a deficit so large that #38 V-Series.R driver Sebastien Bourdais says he’s not thinking about it.
“Mathematically, it’s still possible, but so is a meteorite hitting the racetrack. I think at some point you just have to focus on your own destiny, and if things align, and by some kind of miracle, you end up winning the championship, you know, it’ll be a heck of a headline.
“All you can do is give your best, and in that particular case, something seriously wrong needs to happen to our competitors. It’s like they need to take all of themselves out on the first corner, or something drastic needs to happen during the race, and we need to have a lot of things going our way to end up 1-2.
“Maybe it’s highly unlikely, but, you know, just take the green flag. Give yourself the best chance to have a good result, and go from there.”
As for 2026, Bourdais expects to return to the WEC with Cadillac. “I don’t really plan on any changes,” he said when asked about his programme for next year.
Calado: “It’s just another race”
Ferrari’s James Calado enters this weekend in the lead of the Hypercar Drivers’ World Championship, a position that he’s held with co-drivers Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi since Imola in April.
The three-time FIA WEC world champion is no stranger to title showdowns. This, in fact, is his eighth time heading to the final round in championship contention, making him well-used to the added pressure that it brings.
“It’s just another race,” he said. “Of course, we’ve been in this situation many, many times, where it’s always come down to the last few races.
“We just don’t treat it any differently. No extra pressure, we just do our job, hopefully not make any mistakes like we did the last few races, try and put ourselves in a position where we’re not going to lose out in neutralisations and see what we can do.
“We’ve got the lead, it’s not a lot, but we have the lead and that’s what’s important.”
Hanson ready for title showdown after “mixed bag” season
Leading the pursuit of the #51 Ferrari is the sister, privateer #83 entry of Phil Hanson, Robert Kubica and Ye Yifei, who sit 13 points adrift.
As the season comes to a close, and every championship point becomes that extra bit more important, Hanson is well aware of exactly when the 24 Hours of Le Mans winning crew missed out on top results, and also when they overperformed.
“In and around Le Mans we’ve had some strong performances, but we’ve also left a lot of points on the table,” the Briton reflected. “There’s been a few weekends where we’ve been very competitive in terms of the pace of the car, the pace of the team and drivers, but for whatever reason the races haven’t gone our way.
“But at the same time, we’ve executed really clean and strong races at the tracks where we’ve felt like we haven’t had the car, Sāo Paulo being one of them. Recovering at Fuji with damage being another very good execution, so it’s been a bit of a mixed bag.”
Porsche Penske assembles
To mark the end of the Porsche Penske Motorsport Hypercar story (for now at least) this weekend in Bahrain, the team came together with both cars for a photoshoot to mark the occasion.
Estre: Porsche “ready, but we know it’s going to be difficult”
In the Porsche Penske Motorsport camp, the story of 2025 has been one of two halves. A second-place finish at Le Mans kick-started a sensational comeback for reigning drivers’ world champions Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor, who enter the final leg of their title defence 21 points behind the #51 Ferrari crew.
“We feel ready, but we know it’s going to be difficult,” Estre commented.
“For sure, Ferrari is looking quite strong. They’ve were very strong at the beginning of the year, less towards the last races, but I assume they are going to be strong this weekend.
“Plus, the other brands, which aren’t sleeping. We’ve seen with Peugeot, with Alpine, Toyota of course, and with this amount of deficit we need to score big points to make sure that the gap is big, so it’s a tough task.”
The Frenchman is trying to avoid getting caught up in the intricacies of the championship battle, and is instead simply aiming for the win in the final race of Porsche’s factory WEC programme.
“I have to say for sure we think about the championship, but in the end, all we have to do is win the race,” he said. “That brings the most points, and then let them do their race and see where they end up.”
Button, Jaminet bring special helmets
For the final race of his professional motor racing career, Cadillac Hertz Team Jota’s Jenson Button is returning to his racing roots with a distinctive black and yellow helmet.
“The reason for this colour, and this design, is my dad, when I was racing in go karts, he designed this helmet,” the 45-year-old told FIA WEC TV during Free Practice 3.
“When we didn’t have helmet designers back in the ‘80s, my dad decided to paint it black and put these like horns on the top. He purposefully did that to scare all the other kids, so when they were looking behind and I was coming up behind them, they get scared of the black helmet coming towards them, I guessed it worked! It’s a bit of a nod to that, and it incorporates my current design as well.”
Also with a one-off helmet design is Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Mathieu Jaminet. The Frenchman is making his final start for the German marque this weekend, after a decade-long relationship.
Pourchaire “confident and ready”
Whilst Button’s FIA WEC career is coming to a close, another is just beginning, as Théo Pourchaire makes his Hypercar debut aboard the #94 Peugeot TotalEnergies 9X8.
The Frenchman, who has raced in the ELMS with Algarve Pro Racing this season, will compete for Peugeot full-time in 2026, but the expiration of Stoffel Vandoorne’s contract after the 6 Hours of Fuji opened the door for him to debut one race early.
Pourchaire joins the 9X8 programme during an uptick in form for the French manufacturer, which has strung together back-to-back podiums for the first time in its FIA WEC history.
“It’s a big opportunity for me,” he admitted. “The first big opportunity of my career after my Formula 2 championship-winning season in 2023. For me, the goal is to learn as much as possible for next season. I will drive full-time in 2026, so for sure if we have the opportunity to do a great result that would be even better, podium or race win, Peugeot is strong since the last two race weekends.”
“Driving with Loïc [Duval], Malthe [Jakobsen], it’s a great team. The team has been very good with me, they were helping me since I arrived. [I] did a lot of simulator already, some test days, so I feel confident and ready to give my best for them.”
Manufacturers’ Championship the priority for Ferrari
With a comfortable 39-point margin over Porsche, Ferrari enters this weekend on the verge of winning its first prototype manufacturers’ world championship in 53 years.
Despite having two cars sitting at the top of the drivers’ standings, the Prancing Horse’s global head of endurance, Antonello Coletta, has made it clear that the manufacturers’ crown is the top priority for this weekend.
“The manufacturers are the first target for all of us in the paddock and as usual, it’s the same for Ferrari,” the Italian told reporters.
“In any case, we are very, very happy to be at the last race with a chance to fight for both championships. But it’s clear that manufacturers is the first one for us. If we have a chance to win manufacturers’, the drivers’ championship is the consequence.”
Cannizzo: “Segmenting tracks” key to Ferrari’s 2025 success
Since its debut in 2023, the Ferrari 499P has shone on low drag venues, headlined by its undefeated run at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Ferdinando Cannizzo, head of endurance race cars at Ferrari, credits the work done last year to improve the 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6-powered machine on other track characteristics as one of the key reasons for its commanding position at the top of the championship table.
“From the very beginning, we worked to secure good performance in all the track characteristics. But at the end, the results proved that for sure, the effort that we put in preparing the high efficiency track and Le Mans was clearly achieved first,” he said.
“So last year, we really spent a lot of time segmenting all the tracks and understanding in all the areas in which we were not performing well, how we could set up the car in the best way. And this is what we did in a very detailed way, and so we put in our pocket a different option for the car to be fast in every different circuit.
“And this probably is what gave us the possibility to be really strong at the start of the season, because we have four different tracks with four completely different characteristics, because Qatar is very flat, Imola is up and down, Spa, a high-efficiency track, but still with a lot of very demanding and technical parts. And in Le Mans, it’s very, very high efficiency with a low drag.
“In all this, we found a way to set up the car differently, but in a very special way. So this is the strength that we have got this year, is probably the understanding of the car.”
Champions’ watches revealed
Rolex has released an image of the specially engraved Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona that it will present to the 2025 Hypercar Champions tomorrow night, as it has done every year since becoming the WEC’s Official Timepiece in 2016.
Image credits: Porsche, Rolex, DPPI
