Now a third place is enough for the world title: Brendon Hartley took the fifth pole position of the season for Toyota at the 8 Hours of Bahrain. It was only the second of the season for the #8, but an important one: Because Hartley, Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa don’t need second place on Saturday, but only third place to clinch the world title bring.
Hartley’s shot came straight away in 1:46.564 minutes. Kamui Kobayashi, the unofficial qualifying world champion of the World Endurance Championship (WEC), made a mistake when braking for Turn 8 and locked the inside front wheel. This resulted in a comparatively large gap of 0.480 seconds.
Nevertheless, it was enough for the Toyota #7 (Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez; 2nd) to finish second, as the best non-Toyota was already 0.701 seconds behind pole. That was the #2 Cadillac (Bamber/Lynn/Westbrook; 3rd) of Alex Lynn, who posted a time of 1:47.265 early in the session.
Things didn’t go quite as planned for Porsche. After the 963 looked like the second fastest car behind Toyota on Thursday, only Kevin Estre in the Porsche #6 (Estre/Lotterer/Vanthoor; 4th) made it into the top 5.
The other Porsche 963s finished seventh to ninth behind the two Ferrari 499Ps. But Ferrari won’t be happy either, because like in Fuji, the pace hasn’t been right all weekend. “We’re really racking our brains, the car feels good, but we’re just too far behind,” complained James Calado before qualifying.
Again nothing worked out for Peugeot. The 9X8, for which an update with a rear wing is already in the pipeline, proved to be difficult to drive in the current specification. When braking for the first corner, the car jumped back and forth on the bumps almost uncontrollably. Paul di Resta and Nico Müller lost 2.4 and 2.9 seconds respectively.
The Vanwall #4 (Guerrieri/Vautier/Briscoe; 12th) has to serve a drive-through penalty in the first three laps of the race. Esteban Guerrieri unfastened his seatbelt in turn 11 in the third free practice session, thereby violating Article 4 of Chapter 3 of Appendix L of the International Sporting Code.
WEC: Blomqvist makes his mark
In the LMP2 class there was a big protagonist in qualifying: Tom Blomqvist. The son of rally legend Stig Blomqvist set several best times in a row in the United Autosports Oreca #23 (Pierson/Blomqvist/Jarvis) and finally secured pole in 1.52.290 minutes. He set this mark towards the middle of the session. The competition was tough at this point.
Charles Milesi came closest in the Alpine-Oreca #36 (Vaxiviere/Canal/Milesi; 2nd), followed by the WRT-Oreca #31 (Gelael/Habsburg/Frijns; 3rd) and the Vector-Oreca #10 (Cullen/Kaiser /Aubry; 4.).
Qualifying was shockingly weak for the future champions in the WRT-Oreca #41 (Andrade/Kubica/Deletraz), who only finished in tenth place. However, the only teams that can still overtake WRT in the overall standings only came in fifth (United Autosports #22) and seventh (Inter Europol Competition #34).
WEC: Third pole for the “Iron Dames”
In an exciting GT session in which the lead changed several times, Sarah Bovy came out on top. This means that the “Iron Dames” in the Iron Lynx Porsche #85 (Bovy/Gatting/Frey) will start from pole position for the third time this season after Sebring and Monza. However, Bovy then spun, putting a question mark behind one of their tire sets on the most tire-eating track of the season.
Previously, Ben Keating in the Corvette #33 (Keating/Varrone/Catsburg; 5th) and Thomas Flohr in the AF-Corse-Ferrari #54 (Flohr/Castellacci/Rigon; 4th) had set best times, but both had their powder too early missed.
With every minute the track became cooler and faster, so Liam Talbot in the TF-Sport-Aston-Martin #777 (Talbot/Stevenson/Fujii; 2nd), Ahmad Al-Harthy in the TF-Sport-Aston-Martin #25 ( Al Harthy/Dinan/Eastwood; 3rd) and Takeshi Kimura in the Kessel-Ferrari #57 (Kimura/Masson/Serra; 4th) passed. Talbot replaces Satoshi Hoshino this weekend.
The return of the Project 1 Porsche #56 (Hyett/Jeanette/Cairoli; 10th) on Friday was pleasing. After Gunnar Jeanette’s accident in the second free practice session on Thursday, the Porsche 911 RSR-19 “Rexy” first had to be inspected, but turned out to be repairable.
The race starts on Saturday at 12 p.m. CET, which corresponds to 2 p.m. local time.