How the WEC's heavyweight duel reached its controversial flashpoint

The second leg of the Bahrain World Endurance Championship double-header began in acrimony and ended in the same way as Ferrari and Porsche duked it out for GTE Pro honours on the track and in the stewards’ room. The shame was that the controversy bookended a fabulous motor race in which it was difficult to call a winner at any point, even after the title contenders came together with 11 minutes of the eight-hour race remaining.

The clash between the Ferrari driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi and Michael Christensen’s Porsche has for the moment handed the crown to the Italian driver and team-mate James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo. Championship honours could, however, yet go the way of Porsche and Kevin Estre and Neel Jani in the #92 911 RSR they shared with Christensen last weekend.

The German marque filed a protest against the winning Ferrari after the race, had it thrown out by the stewards in the second significant ruling on the Ferrari v Porsche battle, and then promptly served notice to appeal. The likelihood is that the GTE Pro drivers’ title, as well as the manufacturers’ crown sealed by Ferrari on Saturday, will be decided by the FIA International Court of Appeal at some unspecified time in the future.

The sorry side of the amazing story of the Bahrain 8 Hours GTE Pro clash started on the Wednesday evening between the two races at the Bahrain International Circuit that closed out the 2021 season. The WEC Committee, a kind of kitchen cabinet comprising technical experts from the FIA and series promoter the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, announced a change in the Balance of Performance for the Ferrari after its draconian hit ahead of the six-hour race.

The power reduction for the 488, put at 25bhp by Ferrari, was halved in the revised table. Porsche raised an objection in the politest possible way, its WEC head of operations Alexander Stehlig suggesting that it didn’t conform to their numbers, while conceding that the FIA and ACO have more data available.

Yet it was Ferrari, the beneficiary of the between-races change, that got all uppity. A protest against the BoPs for Bahrain 1 and 2 was made by the factory AF Corse team and summarily rejected by the race stewards. Full details of Ferrari’s protest – or two protests, because it had to file one for each of its cars – were not in the public domain, but it clearly challenged the legitimacy of the changes under the so-called black ball rule that allows the committee to unilaterally make changes outside the automatic system introduced in 2017.

AF Corse's protest into BoP changes for its two GTE Pro 488s were rejected

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Ferrari cited a WEC press release from 2017, as well as an email exchange between manufacturers and the rulemakers, in its protest. The stewards decreed that neither were legally binding and that only the relevant article in the technical regulations was such. They also stated that “changes by the WEC Committee are not subject to protest or appeal”.

The stewards’ decision came out at lunchtime on Friday, shortly before Calado put in a lap in the timed session that was within 0.2s of qualifying king Estre’s fifth pole of the season. The 0.160s margin between the two marques was, it should be pointed out, the closest of the season. But another pole for the Frenchman moved him and Jani level on points with erstwhile leaders Pier Guidi and Calado.

The Porsche and the Ferrari appeared equally matched as the race got under way. Estre and Calado were rarely separated by more than a second for the first 30 or so laps before the Brit snuck ahead shortly before the first pitstops. The Frenchman was back ahead after them courtesy of a faster turnaround, the Porsche staying ahead of the Ferrari through the rest of his double stint, and the ones that followed from Jani and Pier Guidi. The gap between them, however, never went over three seconds.

The complexion of the battle changed early in the fourth hour. The Ferrari leapfrogged the Porsche in the pits when Calado and Christensen jumped in. The 488 was now clearly the quicker car: Calado was able to pull away, and Daniel Serra in the second AF entry also moved past the lead 911.

"The prototype was overtaking me and I was on the outside of the corner as you would expect. I wasn’t braking early, but, of course, I have to make sure I can make the corner" Michael Christensen

Porsche, at this point, decided to go creative on strategy. Christensen stopped early in the middle of his double stint, and then was called in during the fourth Full Course Yellow virtual safety car of the race to be replaced by Estre. The Frenchman resumed on four new Michelin tyres 11 or so seconds behind Calado on older rubber, wiped out the gap and raced into a 12s lead. Crucially, Pier Guidi was only able to knock a couple of seconds off that when he got new tyres to try to catch Estre. It looked like this was going to be the defining stint of the race.

Christensen took over with one hour and 10 minutes left during a fifth and final FCY. Porsche had no new tyres left and the Dane got a mix-and-match set of the best of the used rubber available, while Pier Guidi had two new Michelins on the rear.

The two-tyre stop for the Italian more or less halved the Porsche’s advantage, and then Pier Guidi closed down the leader in the space of 20 laps. But his tyres were past their best when he arrived on Christensen’s tail, and that’s where he stayed.

Kevin Estre reacts in the garage as Michael Christensen is turned around

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The manoeuvre that may or may not prove to be decisive happened when Filipe Albuquerque in the United Autosports ORECA dived down the inside of the Porsche at the final corner. The Ferrari just ran into the back of the Porsche, spinning it around.

Seconds later a message flashed up from the race director on the timing screens telling Ferrari to order its driver to give back the position to Christensen. The Ferrari slowed and wasn’t at full speed on the front stretch when the Porsche ducked into the pits. A lap later the Ferrari followed suit: the early stops in the last FCY had meant both cars needed a splash.

Pier Guidi was a couple of seconds up after the stops, and Christensen on his old rubber could get no nearer. The call for the positions to be reversed had been rescinded, though not publicly communicated on the timing screens. The Ferrari crossed the line at the 10pm finish three seconds to the good.

Christensen was livid, claiming that he had been “just punched off the track”. Nor was he doing anything untoward as the LMP2 came past, he insisted.

“The prototype was overtaking me and I was on the outside of the corner as you would expect,” he explained. “I wasn’t braking early, but, of course, I have to make sure I can make the corner.”

“Unintentional” was the word Pier Guidi used to explain the incident.

“I didn’t like [what happened] but I couldn’t do anything different – I couldn’t avoid him,” he continued.

Pier Guidi also pointed out that he had lost significant time on the lap after the incident in his efforts to give back the position. He was approximately 10s slower, the gap between the two cars after Christensen’s spin.

A contrite Pier Guidi joins Calado on the podium

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Porsche quickly put in a protest. It centred on the call from race control, which it argued was made unilaterally by the race director contrary to the FIA’s International Sporting Code. The stewards rejected the protest, claiming that they had made the decision.

“All the decisions related to the incident between #51 and #92 in Turn 14 were reported to the stewards by the race director, investigated and taken by the stewards in accordance with the race director,” read their bulletin.

Porsche served notice of its intent to appeal, and from that moment had 96 hours to put together its case.

The second cars from Ferrari and Porsche finished third and fourth respectively. The Porsche driven by Gianmaria Bruni, Richard Lietz and Frederic Makowiecki briefly led from the end of the first hour and on into the third after an early first stop. The Ferrari of Serra and Miguel Molina was used as a tactical guinea pig by AF, the car twice getting a new set of rear Michelins, rather than the more normal hard-used left side tyres, to trial the strategy for #51.

Hypercar championship fight was effectively ended as a contest with Kobayashi's pole in the #7 in qualifying

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Hypercar championship fight proves an anticlimax

The battle for the 2021 WEC was more or less decided in qualifying last weekend. It was pretty much over when Kamui Kobayashi took pole position and the point that goes with it aboard the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID. All the Japanese driver and team-mates Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez had to do after that to retain their crown was to take the chequered flag.

A third-place finish in the Hypercar class was enough for them to make it two in row, but in the end they finished second to the sister car of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima to finish five points clear. The point for pole turned out to be academic at the end of a race in which the #8 Toyota admittedly had the edge.

There would have been a chance for the drivers of the #8 had they taken pole, so long as the Alpine, the only other car in the Hypercar class, finished between them. That explains an unprecedented focus on qualifying through practice.

Normally, Toyota sends out the driver due to qualify their car for one qualification simulation in the final period of free practice. This time the chosen two, Kobayashi and Hartley, got to go for a quali run in every session. Hartley, who had notched up the #8 car’s first pole of the season the previous weekend, headed Kobayashi each time in practice. The odds looked good for another, which would have given him and his team-mates the faintest whiff of the title.

Buemi was eight seconds down after the stops, but on the fresher rubber he quickly caught the Briton, passing him inside a dozen laps and then pulling out a seven-second advantage. The #8 would lead all but 11 of the remaining laps of the race

It didn’t work out like that. Kobayashi, who had complained of too much understeer when he trailed #7 in qualifying for Bahrain 1, nailed a lap. He found 1.2s week to week, whereas Hartley gained just 0.5s. There were extenuating circumstances, however. Hartley encountered a minor engine glitch in both FP3 (when he was fastest) and qualifying (when he wasn’t). Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon wasn’t entirely sure if it proved decisive.

“There was an engine response problem,” he said. “The time loss has to be quantified.”

With the title gone but for the first retirement of one of Toyota’s new Le Mans Hypercars, the drivers of #8 had a new target. It was announced in race week that this would be Nakajima’s last start with the WEC team. What better way for a stalwart of the team to bow out with a victory?

Nakajima is doused in champagne by his current team-mates and former Toyota man Lapierre

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The Japanese and his team-mates lost contact in the championship in the first of the Bahrain races after adopting an aggressive set-up to combat understeer. It left them with a far too pointy car that rooted its rear Michelins over the course of a double stint in the desert heat. This time, said Buemi, they did a “copy/paste” of the set-up from the sister car.

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

“Basically, we took over the set-up from car #7,” he said, “just to make sure that we don’t have such [high] degradation anymore.”

The #8 Toyota may have adopted the set-up of the sister car, but it went for a different strategy early in the race. The Alpine-Gibson A480 grandfathered LMP1 car in Nicolas Lapierre’s hands got ahead of the Toyotas from the second row of the grid at the start and Buemi, down in third, decided to bring his Formula E experience into play. A bit of fuel saving allowed him to go a lap longer than Conway and, more crucially, he took four tyres at his first stop to the other car’s two left-side Michelins only.

Buemi was eight seconds down after the stops, but on the fresher rubber he quickly caught the Briton, passing him inside a dozen laps and then pulling out a seven-second advantage. The #8 would lead all but 11 of the remaining laps of the race.

There was a little twist in the tale, however. Lopez had the fresher tyres at the end courtesy of those two extra new Michelins that went on #7 at the first stops, and was able to close down Nakajima over the closing laps. A gap that had stood at nearly 40s when they climbed aboard their respective cars came down to just seven at the finish.

Buemi pointed out that #8 had lost a little more time in the pits than #7. A handful of seconds lost to a swap of the steering wheel after some missed gear changes was among the delays.

“We lost over 15 seconds to the sister car in the pitstops,” said the Swiss, “so I think we had a bit more pace on the track.”

The Alpine led for eight laps before being hit by a gearshift problem that required a pitstop to change an actuator. Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andre Negrao fought back from the six-minute delay to get ahead of all the LMP2s and finish third.

A copy/paste set-up gave the #8 Toyota the edge, but it wasn't enough for the title

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LMP2 title goes to WRT

WRT capped an amazing debut season in the LMP2 ranks by claiming a dominant race victory and the class title with Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi. Their winning margin was even bigger than in the opening Bahrain race, though they were arguably less dominant this time aboard their ORECA-Gibson 07.

Antonio Felix da Costa snatched second from the sister Jota entry with Tom Blomqvist at the wheel in the closing stages. The Portuguese, Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez suffered a minute’s worth of delays along the way: a new nose was required after Gonzalez clashed with Loic Duval in the Realteam ORECA early doors and Davidson erroneously came into the pits in what he called an “old man’s mistake”, and then compounded his error by picking up a drive-through as he sped out of the pitlane in a hurry.

Davidson anchored the #38 entry’s comeback, though it is too simplistic to say it could have won without its delays. WRT also lost time in the pits early on as the result of a slow wheel change and a restarting glitch

Davidson made amends when he got back in for the final laps of his professional racing career. His double was, according to Jota’s analysis, the fastest in LMP2 of the Bahrain double-header. It anchored the #38 entry’s comeback, though it is too simplistic to say it could have won without its delays. WRT also lost time in the pits early on as the result of a slow wheel change and a restarting glitch.

The sister Jota car that Blomqvist shared with Stoffel Vandoorne and Sean Gelael was hampered by a broken diveplane late in the race and then a nose change. But it still finished five seconds up on the United car Albuquerque shared with Phil Hanson and Fabio Scherer.

Three straight wins to end the season helped complete a dream debut season in LMP2 for WRT, which had previously won the European Le Mans Series title

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Ferrari squad takes title devoid of controversy in GTE Am ranks

Nicklas Nielsen, Alessio Rovera and Francois Perrodo claimed a fourth GTE Am victory of the season aboard their AF-run Ferrari 488 GTE. It was another win that had all the hallmarks of their successful pursuit of the class title. They were the most consistent performers over the eight hours, helped on their way by carrying 30kg rather than the 45kg of success ballast as in Bahrain 1 and the same power increase as the Pro Ferraris. They got everything right whereas their rivals didn’t.

Matt Campbell put in another storming finish in the lead Dempsey-Proton Porsche he shared with Jaxon Evans and Christian Ried, this time leaving it until the last corner to take the runner-up spot from the Project 1 Porsche driven by Riccardo Pera. Proton was always playing catch-up after bronze driver Ried completed a triple stint at the beginning.

Pera, Matteo Cairoli and Egidio Perfetti were delayed by a one-minute stop-go when the first-named came uncomfortably close to a marshal on the track during an FCY. The team also had to put the Italian back in the car for an extra stint after he fell two minutes short of the required driving time.

Perrodo and co’s only rivals for the title, the TF Sport Aston crew of Ben Keating, Dylan Pereira and Felipe Fraga, lost time with a clash with the other factory-run Aston Martin before a second incident that damaged the steering rack precipitated their withdrawal.

The #83 AF Corse Ferrari crew's path to victory was eased substantially as problems hit TF Sport

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