WEC News: Toyotas sweep front row in Bahrain
TOYOTA GAZOO Racing delivered its best qualifying performance of the year to secure pole position and lock out the front row of the grid for Saturday’s 8 Hours of Bahrain, the final round of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) season.
The team has an exceptional record in Bahrain, having won the last eight races, and it goes into Saturday’s race determined to end a challenging campaign with a return to the podium. After disappointing recent results, qualifying saw a significant improvement thanks to a determined effort from the team and its drivers.
Kamui Kobayashi earned the team’s first pole of 2025 with a lap of one minute 46.826 seconds in the #7 GR010 HYBRID he shares with Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries. Brendon Hartley was just 0.151secs behind in the #8 GR010 HYBRID he drives alongside Sébastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa to complete the one-two.
Team Peugeot TotalEnergies pair of 9X8 Hypercars are set to line up directly behind in third and fourth following an excellent effort by both Malthe Jakobsen and Jean-Éric Vergne, the latter making his final appearance in FIA WEC this weekend prior to taking a season’s sabbatical.
Alex Lynn – pole-sitter for three of the four most recent races arriving in Sakhir – took fifth place in the #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R he shares with Will Stevens and Norman Nato, as the trio cling on to their faint chances of stealing the spoils from under the noses of championship leaders Ferrari.
Behind Marco Sørensen’s sixth-placed Aston Martin Valkyrie, Antonio Giovinazzi secured seventh spot in the #51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P. Together with team-mates James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi, the Italian is aiming to lift the laurels in the Drivers’ World Championship battle in Bahrain, with the trio entering the final race holding a 13-point advantage at the summit of the standings over the privately-run #83 AF Corse entry.
Kamui Kobayashi (Driver, car #7): “I am very happy to be on pole again. It’s the result of a great job and a big effort from the team. We have had a tough season so far, so I am very proud that we could turn it around and get a one-two today. Everyone pushed very hard for this but tomorrow is another day and we know it will not be easy. Our target is to win. We are well prepared, and it should be an exciting race.”
Brendon Hartley (Driver, car #8): “A very nice qualifying from the whole team. We are very pleased with the performance. I did a pretty tidy lap, although there were a couple of small mistakes and I was a bit conservative in places. Kamui nailed it and pipped me to pole. I was desperate to get it but congratulations to him. I am happy to start from the front row, which gives the best possible chance of finishing on the podium.”
Lexus on Pole Again in LMGT3
Lexus again led the way in the LMGT3 class with Finn Gehrsitz in the No. 78 Akkodis ASP entry giving the brand a second pole of the season.
Gehrsitz headed the leaderboard throughout the Hyperpole session with his 2:01.661 time on his second flier not being bettered.
The Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG squad enjoyed its strongest showing of the season to line up second and third, Lorcan Hanafin in the No. 60 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo pipping the sister No. 61 car of Lin Hodenius by just 0.02 seconds, but they were both three tenths adrift of the leading Lexus.