How the #7 Toyota squad moved closer to clinching WEC's 2021 title

The two Toyotas were barely a second apart at the end of the opening stint of Saturday's Bahrain 6 Hours and had twice swapped positions in the laps leading up to their first stops. It looked like it was going to be another close one between the Japanese manufacturer's Le Mans Hypercars, but by the end of the following stint the die had been cast in the favour of championship-leading trio Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi.

Conway had dropped back behind Sebastien Buemi on his in-lap and then lost four seconds in the pits to Brendon Hartley, who'd taken over the sister car. 10 laps after the stops at which both Toyotas took left-side tyres only, the Brit was ahead and 20 laps later, when the two GR010 HYBRIDs came into the pits for the second time, he was more than a dozen seconds to the good.

Put simply, the #7 Toyota looked after its tyres better through a double stint than the #8 Buemi shared with Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima. Buemi and his team-mates had the pace through the first stint on a set of Michelins, but crucially not at the end of the second.

That ultimately determined the outcome of the first leg of the Bahrain double-header that closes out this year's six-round World Endurance Championship. The cause of the drivers of #8 wasn't helped by a couple of delays in the pits, the first in the second hour when the car had to be manoeuvred into position behind the sister car and the second bang on four hours when the front left didn't go on cleanly.

The thread of the captive nut incorporated into the wheel was damaged and a new wheel and tyre had to be brought from the heating ovens. The time loss in the pits explained a slightly unrepresentative 51s margin between the two Toyotas, but this was a race that the drivers of #7 deservedly won.

Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon had predicted that tyre degradation would be the determining factor on a track that is always hard on rubber, even more so last weekend. This was the first Bahrain WEC race to start and finish in daylight.

#8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid: Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“Between our two cars clearly the difference has been made on tyre degradation,” he explained. “Two times in the race #8 has had very big tyre degradation and lost contact with #7. It has to be down to car set-up.”

That's something the team needs to understand ahead of this weekend's eight-hour series finale around the 3.363-mile Bahrain International Circuit.

“One of our homework items,” he called it.

The winning Toyota had a relatively trouble-free race, though Lopez did suffer a braking problem believed to have been caused by glazing of a front brake disc and had a little off at Turn 1. Its only other problem was a lack of pace in qualifying: Hartley beat Kobayashi by four tenths to notch up a first pole of the season for #8. The Japanese driver complained of understeer.

"Between our two cars clearly the difference has been made on tyre degradation. Two times in the race #8 has had very big tyre degradation and lost contact with #7. It has to be down to car set-up" Pascal Vasselon

Toyota had gone into the first race at Bahrain believing it was facing a real threat from Alpine in the three-car Hypercar class in the absence of the Glickenhaus LMHs. The French manufacturer's grandfathered LMP1 car weighed in 110kg lighter than Toyota’s LMH under the latest Balance of Performance, a fact that would, it reckoned, give an advantage in terms of tyre wear.

What's more, it believed the latest BoP tweaks and the increase in the ORECA design's fuel capacity for the Le Mans 24 Hours back in August would more or less bring it onto a par in terms of stint length, the Gibson-engined A480's Achilles' heel in the races leading up to the 24 Hours.

The Alpine driven by Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andre Negrao wasn't, however, a factor last weekend as it trailed the Toyotas home a lap down in third. Vaxiviere kept the Japanese cars honest in the opening laps, staying within a couple seconds for eight or so laps, only to drop away when a throttle problem hit the car before the first round of stops.

The high temperatures also had an effect on fuel consumption and the Alpine, once again, fell several laps short of its rivals on stint length. The Toyotas could hit 31 laps on their energy allocation, the Alpine no more than 28.

#36 Alpine ELF Matmut - Alpine 480 Gibson: Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxviere

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The Signatech team rolled the dice during two of the three Full Course Yellow virtual safety cars to try to mix up the strategy. The tactic was worth a go, reckoned team boss Philippe Sinault, but ultimately worked against his drivers.

“You have to try to gamble when you are behind,” he said.

Kobayashi, Conway and Lopez now have one hand on the end-of-season WEC trophy. Victory in Bahrain 1 means their points lead is such that the Alpine needs to come into the equation for Buemi, Hartley and Nakajima to take the title. A victory for the drivers of #8 over the eight hours of this coming weekend's race would not be enough if the championship leaders finish second, even with points and a half on offer.

Should #7 take the top spot in qualifying, the final podium position gives its drivers the title no matter what. If Alpine is fastest, then Conway and co win on countback with third place. It's worth remembering that LMP2 machinery can no longer deprive cars competing in the top class of points. A delayed finish behind some LMP2 cars would still give them third in the Hypercar class.

WRT wins again in LMP2

Podium P2: #31 Team WRT Oreca 07 - Gibson: Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg-Lothringen, Charles Milesi

Photo by: Adrenal Media

Le Mans class victory or not, WRT didn't look like potential LMP2 winners for much of the Bahrain meeting. The Belgian squad's ORECA-Gibson 07 shared by Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi struggled through free practice and to a lesser extent in qualifying. Yet the trio claimed WRT's first win in a regular WEC round with ease.

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Their car was the most consistent performer in what is now an all-ORECA field over the full six hours. United Autosports’ 07 was a match for Frijns and co in the opening half of the race and the third-placed #28 Jota car flew over the second half, but neither of the British teams strung together the kind of race they needed to beat WRT.

Milesi ended up seventh in class in qualifying, though his starting position was slightly misleading. His quickest time would have put him third had it not been scrubbed out for a track limits violation. Unlike the other frontrunners, WRT didn't go again on a second set of tyres. It still needed a dramatic turnaround for WRT to take the win and the lead in the LMP2 points with it.

“We were really fighting with the car to find the set-up in practice,” said Frijns. “On Thursday we had really bad understeer, which then turned into oversteer. But in the race, all of a sudden, we had a car that performed like it should.”

Habsburg made progress for WRT in the opening stint and then the car vaulted up to second during the first FCY on the two-hour mark when Frijns took over. On a fresh set of Goodyears he quickly moved past Alex Brundle in the Inter Europol car on stint-old rubber to take a lead the WRT car would hold for all but four of the remaining laps.

Frijns, who returned to the wheel for the final stints, ended up over a minute clear of the pole-winning Jota car shared by Stoffel Vandoorne, Tom Blomqvist and Sean Gelael.

#28 Jota Oreca 07 Gibson: Sean Gelael, Stoffel Vandoorne, Tom Blomqvist

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Gelael had lost time during his opening double when he spun after contact with Paul Dalla Lana's GTE Am Aston Martin, but Jota team boss Sam Hignett didn't believe that played a pivotal role in the outcome.

“We wouldn't have beaten them; they had us on pace today,” he said. “Second place was as good as it was going to get. WRT did a brilliant job to come from through from where they were.”

The second Jota entry driven by Antonio Felix da Costa, Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez "came alive", in Hignett's words, over the final three hours, but by then it was too far behind to have a shot at the win.

Gonzalez, a true silver, dropped as low as eighth during his opening double, and then Davidson encountered mid-race braking problems when a ball of spent rubber lodged itself in the left rear cooling duct. The brake temperatures went sky high before things returned to normal when the debris was hooked out in the pits.

“On Thursday we had really bad understeer, which then turned into oversteer. But in the race, all of a sudden, we had a car that performed like it should" Robin Frijns

The United ORECA driven by Filipe Albuquerque, Phil Hanson and Fabio Scherer was right there for three hours only to lose its edge as the race progressed. It was only 11s down at the halfway mark and on the same tyre strategy as the WRT car, but was knocked off the podium by a flying da Costa in the final 10 laps. A 10s penalty after Albuquerque was adjudged to be the guilty party in a clash that spun a lapped Renger van der Zande around in the Inter Europol car didn't aid its cause.

“The penalty didn't help, but in the second half of the race the pace went,” said United boss Richard Dean. “We've got to pull the car apart to find out what happened.”

Racing Team Nederland took fifth and won the Pro-Am sub-class with Giedo van der Garde, Job van Uitert and Frits van Eerd. Van der Garde made one of his trademark flying starts, propelling the TDS Racing-run ORECA from sixth on the grid to first inside two corners. Consistency over the race distance, however, was more important in its 1m20s margin over the Realteam ORECA on the other side of the TDS garage.

Porsche outpaces Ferrari in GTE Pro

#92 Porsche GT TEAM Porsche 911 RSR - 19: Kevin Estre, Neel Jani

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The two factory Porsches were rarely separated by a second over the course of the Bahrain 6 Hours and never by more than five. It was pretty much the same for the two Ferraris. The only problem was that there were multiple seconds, 35 by the end of the race, between the white train and the red one. The reason for that was a highly contentious change in the Balance of Performance for the Italian cars in the run-up to the race.

It was contentious because it was outside the scope of the automatic BoP system introduced for 2017, which was meant to rid the paddock of the kind of squabbling that made an unwelcome return last week. Ferrari estimated that the downward change in the turbo boost pressure curve for the V8 in the back of its 488 GTE Evos robbed them of 25bhp. That's double the change between races allowed under the auto system: it lays down a maximum adjustment of 10kW or 13.5bhp. That means the organisers, the FIA and the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, have invoked the so-called black ball rule to go beyond that.

Ferrari cried foul ahead of the race and again afterwards, with GT boss Antonello Coletta calling the change “punitive”. James Calado, whose lead in the GTE Pro championship with Alessandro Pier Guidi was reduced to one point, reckoned it just wasn't plain fair.

“We lacked so much power that there was nothing more we could do: this isn't a fair fight for a world championship,” he said.

Ferrari tried to mix it up strategically by pitting out of sequence during one of the FCY's, but to no avail.

“You've got to try something when you are so far off the pace,” said Calado, “even if you know it's probably not going to work.”

Given that one of the two car types competing full-time in GTE Pro in the WEC this year was clearly superior to the other and that one crew from each manufacturer was a long away ahead of the other in the championship battle, the finishing order at the end of the six hours was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

#51 AF Corse: James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi

Photo by: Ferrari

Kevin Estre and Neel Jani, Porsche's best-placed car in the points going into the Bahrain double-header, duly won from the closely following sister Porsche 911 RSR shared by Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz, which was just 0.7s down at the end. Bruni and Lietz played a supporting role and Jani expressed relief at the fact that he knew neither was going “to launch it down the inside” at any point.

Third place went to the championship-leading Ferrari crew of Pier Guidi and Calado by a couple of seconds from team-mates Miguel Molina and Daniel Serra. If you could have got odds on that top four with a bookmaker, it would have been worth betting the farm on it.

Porsche insisted it wasn't as easy as it looked given the importance of tyre wear at this fixture. Alexander Stehlig, head of operations at the Porsche WEC squad, suggested the Manthey-run team was “on a knife edge” throughout the six hours.

“We were always on the border of the temperature window of our tyre,” he explained. “We knew that if we had to go to the next [harder] one the pace would not be so good.”

“We lacked so much power that there was nothing more we could do: this isn't a fair fight for a world championship" James Calado

Porsche, however, isn't going into the second leg of the Bahrain double-header believing it has the championship in its pocket. Stehlig reckons it's going to be an entirely different race given that half of the eight hours will take place under the cover of darkness.

“With different ambient temperatures, it will be an entirely different race,” he said. “This time we raced from 11am to 5pm and next time we race from 2pm to 10pm. By 5pm the sun has gone down and you can push much more on the tyres.”

Ferrari begs to differ. “They've handed it to Porsche on a plate,” reckoned Calado.

The Italian marque is, of course, pushing for a BoP change. It remains unclear what will happen for the simple reason that the FIA and the ACO refused to speak about the BoP, publicly or even privately to Ferrari. The manufacturer insisted that it had received no explanation for the draconian BoP it received ahead of Bahrain.

Aston Martin ends Ferrari's GTE Am run

#33 TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage Amr: Ben Keating, Dylan Pereira, Felipe Fraga

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The TF Sport Aston Martin squad finally broke AF Corse and Ferrari's monopoly on the top spot in GTE Am this season. AF's pair of full-season Am entries and the car it runs under the Cetilar banner had shared out the victories in the previous four races, but this time a TF Vantage GTE made it back into the winner's circle for the first time since Le Mans in 2020.

TF drivers Dylan Pereira, Felipe Fraga and Ben Keating took a 5.6s victory from the Dempsey-Proton Porsche 911 RSR shared by Matt Campbell, Jaxon Evans and Christian Ried. They might have won by more but for employing a strategy that usually works in their favour.

Keating started the race and completed two full stints to get through the one hour and 45 minute minimum driving time for a bronze-rated driver. The problem for TF was that it had already pitted when the first FCY arrived, whereas its rivals were able to take advantage of the yellows to bring their cars in.

The team reckoned it could have cost them as much as 35s, but Pereira was able to haul the car into the lead shortly after halfway. The Aston only fell off the top spot thereafter when it pitted, though both the lead Dempsey-Proton Porsche and the Project 1 car that finished third closed down its lead in the finishing stages.

The Ferrari wasn't the same force as it had been at previous races after receiving a similar BoP hit to that of the Pro cars. Top Ferrari finishers were points leaders Nicklas Nielsen, Alessio Rovera and Francois Perrodo in fifth.

#77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR - 19: Jaxon Evans, Matt Campbell

Photo by: Porsche Motorsport