A juicy reminder for all Toyota competitors: Gazoo Racing once again pulled out all the stops at the finale of the 2023 World Endurance Championship (WEC) at the Bahrain International Circuit and achieved a clear one-two victory.
The old and new world champions are Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa in the Toyota #8, who also clearly won the race.
The story of the victory is quickly told: Buemi won the start, left the chaos behind him and drove off into the sunset, his teammates converting. With a confidently controlled drive, the #8 achieved a start-to-finish victory that was never in jeopardy. It is the second successful title defense in the history of the WEC – against, of all things, the car that had already achieved this feat in 2019/20 and 2021.
We are of course talking about the Toyota #7 (Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez), which took second place. However, the race was by no means as straight as that of the teammates. The #7 had to fight its way through the entire field.
Bamber causes chaos at the start
The reason for this was that Earl Bamber in the Cadillac #2 (Bamber/Lynn/Westbrook; 2nd) made a serious braking mistake at the start. This brought half a dozen vehicles out of the race, including his own. The New Zealander slid into Mike Conway’s Toyota with the wheels stationary and turned it around.
Numerous vehicles had to avoid the run-off zone. When they got back on the track, there was chaos again: Phil Hanson in the United Autosports Oreca #22 (Lubin/Hanson/Albuquerque) pushed his teammate Tom Blomqvist in the United Autosports Oreca #23 (Pierson/Blomqvist/Jarvis ) in the Vanwall #4 (Guerrieri/Vautier/Briscoe).
Cadillac and United Autosports each received a 60-second stop-and-go penalty for their violations. In addition, the front of the Cadillac V-Series.R was damaged, which meant a loss of time of around two seconds per lap in the first stint. Chip Ganassi Racing then used the race as a test session.
Conway drove off again and rolled up the field from behind. After four laps he had overtaken the smaller classes, and by the first pit stop he had moved up to third position. But then his forward momentum ended when he got stuck behind the #51 Ferrari (Pier Guidi/Calado/Giovinazzi) of Alessandro Pier Guidi.
His willingness to let the Toyota pass was less than the theoretical title chances that Ferrari still had in this race. It was only through an undercut during the second pit stop that Toyota #7 managed to take second place. It wasn’t possible to move further forward because the #8 was the faster car for both of them, even when the road was clear.
Huge performance from Jota, then a serious mistake
The battle for third place was exciting and bitter, with four vehicles in the draw. Ferrari, which emerged as the clear winner from the collision at the start, defended its territory against two charging Porsche 963s throughout the race.
Surprisingly, their flagship was the privately entered Jota-Porsche #38 (Felix da Costa/Stevens/Ye), which also got through the start hustle and bustle well. He impressed in the race with several spectacular overtaking maneuvers.
Michael Christensen’s Porsche #5 (Cameron/Christensen/Makowiecki) had to back down in the first stint. In the third hour, Yifei Ye caught up with the Ferraris. The Chinese, who drove probably his best double stint of the season, prevailed against the Ferrari #50 (Fuoco/Molina/Nielsen).
He then came close to the Ferrari #51 (Pier Guidi/Calado/Giovinazzi), but the battle lasted a long time. The overtaking maneuver was only successful after the handover to Antonio Felix da Costa, but the Portuguese braked in the last corner. This enabled Nicklas Nielsen in #50 to win both positions after an undercut. Shortly afterwards, Felix da Costa used his fresher tires to also pass Nielsen.
The Jota-Porsche was now in third place and even started to catch up with the #7 Toyota. The golden Porsche 963 came within 13 seconds. But then Felix da Costa made a serious mistake: He slipped into the run-off zone in turn 1 and pulled directly in front of the TF-Sport Aston-Martin #777 (Talbot/Stevenson/Fujii). This resulted in a drive-through penalty.
Ferrari fratricidal war and Fuoco’s defensive battle
So everything started all over again: both Ferraris back in positions three and four. Antonio Felix da Costa overtook a Ferrari, but Jota fell back again at the penultimate pit stop. But now the two Ferraris began to fight each other.
Antonio Fuoco tried to overtake Alessandro Pier Guidi through the run-off zone, but briefly lost control and slid into the apex of Turn 8. Nevertheless, he stayed on the gas, took the other run-off zone with him at the corner exit, then both went side by side into Turn 10. Only now did Fuoco assert himself and then take off.
Pier Guidi now had to deal again with the Jota-Porsche, which was now driven by Will Stevens. After a chase lasting three quarters of an hour, Stevens managed to overtake Pier Guidi, who was struggling with his tires. As soon as that happened, Kevin Estre got involved in the Porsche #6 (Estre/Lotterer/Vanthoor).
The Porsche #6 also had a race to catch up after Laurens Vanthoor had to go through the run-off zone after the collision at the start and lost ground. Estre made short work of Pier Guidi, who only finished sixth.
In the last stint, both Porsches hunted down the remaining Ferrari. But Estre couldn’t keep up with Stevens’ pace. Stevens was able to reduce Fuoco’s lead of six seconds to 1.6 seconds, but the Ferrari driver held on and secured the final podium place after an hour-long, high-class sporting battle.
The #5 Porsche couldn’t keep up with the pace of the group in front of it and finished seventh. The two Peugeot 9X8s couldn’t really stand out, but overtook the Proton-Porsche #99 (Bruni/Tincknell/Jani) in the last stint.