Toyota wins in Bahrain, Buemi – Davidson crowned

Toyota aimed to leave Bahrain with the two world crowns, the Japanese team will have only achieved half of its objective. The TS040 Hybrid n°7 finally achieves its first success of the season, led by Stéphane Sarrazin? Mike conway and Alexander Wurz. The trio of the No. 7 perfectly took over from the No. 8, in the lead at the start of the race, but which experienced a new mechanical failure in Sakhir, with an alternator failure during the second hour, forcing the prototype Japanese has a very long stop of thirty minutes. Fourth place for Tréluyer’s Audi R18 e-tron quattro? Fassler? Lotterer, however, was not enough to prevent Sébastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson to finally be crowned among the Pilots despite their setbacks. The Manufacturers' title will therefore be decided during the Interlagos final in Brazil on November 30.

The Porsche 919 Hybrid n°14 from Jani? Dumas – Lieb and Webber n°20? Hartley? Bernhard completes the podium in Bahrain, and offers a very good overall result for the German brand. In LM P1-L, Rebellion offers itself new success with the Kraihamer trio? Belicchi-Leimer who took advantage of the battery problems at the very end of the race of the car Cheers-Heidfeld-Beche. The CLM P1/01 was unable to complete a single lap of the Sakhir track due to a problem with its gearbox.

In LM P2, the KCMG team offers itself another victory after Austin thanks to the Richard Bradley trio? Alexander Imperatori? Matthew Howson. SMP Racing, whose two cars touched each other at the end of the event after a first contact between the No. 18 Audi R1 and the No. 03 Oreca 27R (this car being penalized with a stop&go before being victim of an engine problem in the last quarter of an hour), takes second place with the crew of the No. 37 Ladygin? Shaitar? Ladygin. Oak Racing's Morgan-Judd takes 3rd place ahead of Olivier Pla's G-Drive Racing Ligier JS P2? Julien Canal and Roman Rusinov, who lost a lot of time at the start of the race, following a collision on the first lap with the No. 37 of SMP Racing, causing damage to half of the rear axle.

In GTE Pro, Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander won the title thanks to their success at the wheel of the Ferrari 458 Italia n°51. L'Aston Martin Vantage #97 of Darren Turner and Stefan Mücke finished 2nd ahead of the #71 Ferrari of James Calado and Davide Rigon. The two Porsche 911 RSRs from Team Manthey follow in 4th and 5th position. The GTE Am category saw victory and the title for the No. 95 Aston Martin Vantage of David Heinemeier-Hansson? Kristian Poulsen and Nicki Thiim. The #81 Ferrari from Stephen Wyatt’s AF Corse team? Michele Rugolo? Andrea Bertolini and Pedro Lamy's second Vantage? Paul Dalla Lana and Chistoffer Nygaard finished on the podium.

Find the full report of the 6 hours of Bahrain produced by our special correspondent on site, in issue 1987 of AUTOhebdo, available from Monday evening in digital version, and from next Wednesday on newsstands.