Toyota leads after two hours of racing

After two hours of racing at the 8 Hours of Bahrain, la Toyota TS050 Hybrid n°7 Kamui Kobayashi, associated to Mike conway and Jose Maria Lopez, leads the last 2019 event of the World ChampionshipEndurance 2019-2020.

The Japanese is ahead of the No. 13 R1 – Rebellion Racing of Gustavo Menezes by around forty seconds and by more than a minute the second Toyota No. 8 of Brendon Hartley.

The no. 7 had immediately taken control of the race, in a starting procedure marked by an incident at turn no. 2 between the no. 60 Ginetta G1-LT-P5 – Team LNT of Charlie Robertson and the Rebellion R13 n°1 – Rebellion Racing by Bruno Senna.

At that moment, Robertson lost control of his prototype at the start of the turn, and hit Senna, the two leading LM P1s spinning off. Collateral victim of the incident, Sébastien Buemi (Toyota TS050 n°8) was unable to avoid contact, and lost several positions in this mishap before moving up the hierarchy.

Ferrari stay the course

In GTE Pro, the #488 Ferrari 51 GTE of Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado is in the lead, after initially resisting the attack from the Porsche 911 RSR n°91 by Gianmaria Bruni – Richard Lietz.

Offensive at the first braking, but pushed aside by Pier Guidi, Bruni nevertheless saw Kévin Estre (Porsche 911 RSR n°92), Marco Sorensen (Aston Martin Vantage n°95) and Miguel Molina (Ferrari 488 n°71) took advantage of this gap to pass the former official Ferrari driver.

The latter, however, managed to regain the advantage over Molina for 4th place in the category, before the first bursts of stopping. Behind the #51, we currently find the two Porsches #92 and #91, followed by the #97 Aston Martin of Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin.

Visibly shifted in strategy, the No. 95 of Sorensen – Thiim fell to last place in the category.

In LM P2, United Autosports, with the #07 Oreca 22 of Albuquerque – Hanson – di Resta leads the race, while the #98 Aston Martin Vantage – Aston Martin Racing of Gunn – Turner – Dalla Lana dominates the category GTE-Am.

Note in this category that the Porsche 911 RSR n°56 – Team Project1, once second, was returned to its box, obviously due to exhaust problems.