Title decisions in many different ways: The 8 Hours of Bahrain ended the World Endurance Championship (WEC) 2022 with confident and not so confident title decisions.
In the hypercar class, the Balance of Performance (BoP) decided in favor of Toyota. In the GTE Pro, on the other hand, there was a Ferrari title with drama.
The race was a showcase for the Toyota GR010 Hybrids, which claimed a stunning one-two. Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose-Maria Lopez took the win. Toyota swapped positions after just over three hours because the #7 car was faster. Alpine finished an unchallenged third, three laps down.
Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa drove home second place and are now world champions. After two world championship titles for the #7, the #8 has now struck back. For Buemi it is the third world title after 2014 and 2018, for Hartley after 2015 and 2017 (both with Porsche) also number three, but the first with Toyota, for Hirakawa it is the first FIA world championship.
In LMP2, third place was enough for Antonio Felix da Costa, Roberto Gonzales and Will Stevens to win the title. The WRT-Oreca #31 of Sean Gelael, Robin Frijns and Rene Rast got the last win of the season.
The GTE Pro wrote the big drama: James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi trembled to defend their title. The fourth gear in the transmission of the Ferrari 488 GTE Evo #51 had said goodbye at the beginning of the penultimate hour. In fifth gear, Calado/Pier Guidi towed the car – that was important – ahead of all the GTE-Am vehicles.
That was enough for the title because the two works Porsches did not get past third and fourth place. Victory went to Miguel Molina and Antonio Fuoco in the #52 Ferrari.
In the GTE Am, the TF Sport drivers Ben Keating, Henrique Chaves and Marco Sörensen clinched the title with the victory of the Procject 1 Porsche driven by Matteo Cairoli, Mikkel Pedersen and Nicolas Leutwiler.