6H Barhain : Team WRT wins and takes the lead before the final!
At the 6 Hours of Bahrain, the #31 ORECA 07 of Team WRT took a second consecutive victory after its first success at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Belgian team, which has already won the ELMS title, now holds the lead in the championship ahead of the final race on November 6 at the same circuit.
In the heat of Bahrain, Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi were the fastest. At the end of the six-hour race, the #31 ORECA 07 crossed the finish line 1 minute and 1.872 seconds ahead of the #28 Jota Sport ORECA 07, which started from pole position but was pushed at the beginning of the race by a GTE Am. The podium was completed by the British team’s sister car. Going into the final round, the WRT Team is in first place in the Championship with 113 points, ahead of Jota Sport (108 points for the #28 and 96 points for the #38).
The #22 ORECA of United Autosports has to be content with fourth place. Filipe Albuquerque, Phil Hanson and Fabio Scherer were often at the front of the field and in the fight for victory, but a ten-second penalty for contact with Inter Europol Competition prevented them from reaching the podium.
The #29 ORECA 07 of Racing Team Nederland, driven by Giedo Van der Garde, Job Van Uitert and Frits van Eerd, completed the top five. The trio won the Pro Am category and led the field by nine points ahead of their closest pursuers DragonSpeed. Giedo Van der Garde put in a great performance: starting from sixth place, the Dutch driver made a superb comeback to take the lead in the LMP2 class from the first corner and led for the majority of the first two hours of the race.
Sophia Floersch and Beitske Visser joined by Gabriel Aubry in the Richard Mille Racing Team’s #1 ORECA 07 finished sixth ahead of RealTeam Racing, second in the Pro Am class, and High Class Racing. The #34 ORECA 07 of Inter Europol Competition, competitive but delayed by race events, and the #44 of Arc Bratislava followed.
The #21 ORECA 07 of DragonSpeed closed the gap. After losing a wheel in the third hour of the race and suffering from a GPS antenna problem, the American team will have to rely on the last race scheduled for November 6 to take its revenge and hope to regain the lead in the Pro Am category.
In the Hypercar category, Toyota dominated the penultimate round of the FIA WEC to claim the Manufacturers’ World Championship title. The #7 GR010 Hybrid of Jose Maria Lopez, Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi crossed the finish line 51 seconds ahead of the #8 of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley. The #36 Alpine A480 of André Negrão, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere took third place and another podium finish.
See you on Saturday, November 6 to follow the 8 Hours of Bahrain, final of the FIA WEC.