WEC News: Toyota sweeps the Bahrain front row

TOYOTA GAZOO Racing will fight for the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) titles from the front of the grid after a spectacular one-two in qualifying for the season-ending 8 Hours of Bahrain.

Brendon Hartley took pole position, in the #8 GR010 HYBRID he shares with Sébastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa, with a lap of 1min 46.714secs. Nyck de Vries completed a perfect day for the team by taking second, 0.323secs behind, in the #7 GR010 HYBRID he drives alongside Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi.

Antonio Giovinazzi missing out on a spot on the front row by barely four hundredths in the best of the Ferrari 499Ps.

One point for pole means TOYOTA GAZOO Racing goes into the eighth race of the season nine points behind Porsche in the manufacturers’ standings. An eighth consecutive Bahrain victory on Saturday will secure the title, while Kamui and Nyck still have a chance of the drivers’ crown, trailing by 37 points with 38 available.

The 10-minute Hyperpole session began as night fell at Bahrain International Circuit and track temperatures dropped slightly. On new medium tires again, a blisteringly fast first flying lap from Brendon Hartley earned pole position, with Nyck de Vries only a fraction behind in second, also on his opening effort.

As the clock ticked down, none of their HYPERCAR rivals came close to that impressive pace and the checkered flag flew to confirm TOYOTA GAZOO Racing’s sixth consecutive pole position in Bahrain.

Nyck de Vries (Driver, car #7): “This came as a little bit of a surprise for the whole team but obviously it’s a great result to be on the front row with both cars. Brendon did a great lap in Hyperpole, congratulations to the #8 car. We have an important day tomorrow because we are still fighting for both championships, so we aim to have a clean race and bring home at least one title. It’s going to be a tough fight, with a lot of tyre degradation and some fast competitors but we will do our best to come out on top.”

Brendon Hartley (Driver, car #8): “Big thanks to my team-mates for trusting me to do qualifying, and to the team as well for turning things around after a difficult free practice day. I didn’t quite get the tyre temperature right on my qualifying lap, but I learnt from that and in Hyperpole I really put it together. The car came alive, and the lap felt really nice. It feels great to be on pole position for the season finale. We’ve had a challenging year on car #8 so we are pushing really hard to finish on a high and win the World Championship for TOYOTA GAZOO Racing.”

McLaren mastery in LMGT3

United Autosports hit their adversaries with the old one-two in the LMGT3 category, with Joshua Caygill and James Cottingham’s McLarens separated by a scant two thousandths-of-a-second at the top of the timing screens as the former secured the British outfit’s first pole position of the campaign.

Fuji pole-sitter François Heriau pushed the pair hardest in third to maintain Vista AF Corse’s strong finish to the season with the Ferrari 296 GT3, as Sarah Bovy slotted the Iron Dames’ Lamborghini Huracán into fourth, ahead of Aliaksandr Malykhin in the recently-crowned #92 Manthey Purerxcing Porsche. Barely a second blanketed the entire LMGT3 top ten, setting the scene for a spectacularly close scrap on race day.

Qualifying Results