Fuel in the tank, but 20 minutes of time on the stint for Bronze drivers as James Calado is now into the #51 Ferrari 499P with a new seat with built in cooling. That's very interesting to know about at the hottest race on the WEC calendar. The gap has grown between Toyota and Ferrari and in comes the leading Toyota #8 doing the stop two laps before, going for the undercut. It is wine and roses for the #8 as Sebastien Buemi hands off to Brendon Hartley, the Swiss driver handing off to the New Zealander. At Vector Sport, their technical infringement has to do with minimum mandatory tire pressure I think and they are serving a penalty? It is a long stop so they are taking the pain. Alex Lynn is now in the #2 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac, managed by former Indianapolis 500 champion Dario Franchitti.
Vector Sport back on track and now the #31 WRT car leads LMP2 with Ferdinand Habsburg leading Oliver Rasmussen and Robert Kubica. Toyota, Ferrari, Toyota, the top three as Kamui Kobayashi resets fastest lap at 1:50.498. Alessandro Pier Guidi says tire degradation here at Bahrain is way too high and this makes it harder to keep up the pace without destroying the tires and compromises must be made. That is the scoop. Ferrari and AF Corse are trying every trick in the book on tire strategy even with a fixed tire allotment. #51 passed by #7 and Kamui Kobayashi goes by. Ferrari 488 GTE #21 spins all on his own. Toyota on warmer tires after the earlier stop has capitalized. Sarah Bovy 17 minutes short of her maximum stint time but they are doing a driver change and it will be Michelle Gatting into the car.
We still have not seen Claudio Schiavoni in the #60 Porsche. Liam Talbot might be close to the end of his stint, but he may not do a triple. It will only be a double. The #25 ORT by TF Sport team has just pitted as well. The #36 Oreca for Alpine is in. The Iron Dames have done all single stints. WRT have brought both their cars in twice in LMP2. Julien Canal hands off the #36 Alpine car to Charles Milesi. Christian Ried getting set to get back into the #77 Dempsey Proton Porsche 911 RSR-19 currently driven by Mikkel Pedersen. Mike Conway tells us that he had a difficult stint, and got rear ended by the #2 Ganassi Racing Cadillac of Earl Bamber.
He says the Ferrari's have been easier on the tires than the Toyota's have. Tire management is crucial because of the old, porous, abrasive surface here in Bahrain, the original surface from 2004 still on the track. That's 19 years. Fred Makowiecki raced here in 2004 in a Dodge Viper. There is a stat for you. A battle for seventh between Davide Rigon and Ben Keating. Rigon an ex-factory GTE Pro driver for Ferrari. TF Sport will have customer Corvette's in LMGT3 next year. Alessio Picariello now in the #60 Iron Lynx Porsche while the Iron Dames entry #85 has Michelle Gatting at the wheel of it. Ahmad Al Harthy is back in the #25 ORT TF Sport Aston/
Robert Kubica being told what the strategy is. Everything groovy at the moment. Great radio message! Jota Porsche vs. Ferrari. Antonio Fuoco vs. Yifei Ye. Fuoco squeezes past the LMP2 and he is hanging onto the tail of the Porsche! Yikes! Traffic ahead. Yifei Ye parks it and stays ahead of the Ferrari. Antonio Felix Da Costa looking on, going exclusively to Formula E for Porsche next year. David Heinemeier Hanson now under pressure too, look, from Oliver Jarvis. Side by side stuff, look. The turn one drag race, Jarvis on the cleaner line and just edges past!
We will miss the LMP2 cars. We'll see the LMP2's at Le Mans but that is it. Vanwall stopped on the road into the pit lane. Ryan Briscoe at the wheel of it. We could be under Full Course Yellow. That is safety car line one, not the pit entrance. Oy yoy yoy! Ryan Briscoe, thankfully, gets the engine fired up and heads for the pit lane. Antonio Felix Da Costa has had a great race so far wit his Jota Porsche teammates. It is not over until it's over. They think they can fight the Ferrari's and predicts the Toyota's are too fast for everybody.
The floodlights come on here in Bahrain. The Bronze GTE Am battle, from this point forward, there are five cars... Ian James, Liam Talbot, Ben Keating... hold the phone, mate. P/J. Hyett, and Takeshi Kimura. Keating pitted out of sequence. #60, they will put Claudio Schiavoni into the car if he is feeling better. He might be able to do one single and then a stint and a half. Hypercar is wonderful but we have seen loads of good action in LMP2 and GTE Am as well. Multiclass racing has lots of threads going through, three penny bits everywhere. Hopefully drivers have a filter on their visor as the sun is setting. It is so hot in the car as every sports car is now closed cockpit.
The sunset is so intense. It glares right in your eyes. Yikes! Some close racing, between Davide Rigon and Ahmad Al Harthy. Ian James and Liam Talbot scrapping as well. Rigon is a Platinum driver. The Ferrari could be losing speed on the straight compared to the Aston Martin. Well, well, well. Takeshi Kimura has done his stint and likely all cramped up. So now it will be up to both Daniel Serra and Esteban Masson. A couple drivers are into their third stint. It is burtal with a temperature in the desert of 36 degrees Celsius wrestling the world's fastest octopus.
Your body goes tense going into the corner. It is just like steering a canoe or a kayak. WRT and Ferdinand Habsburg leads LMP2 with the sister car third with Robert Kubica and Juan Manuel Correa in second place now in the #9 Prema entry. James Calado being told to up the pace to catch Yifei Ye. Justin Taylor, race engineer, keeping Calado informed of what he needs to do. Racing drivers going for it, at their best. Jota and Yifei Ye are turning it on. The sun is beginning to set in the desert. Five and a half hours to go. Darkness will fall quickly.
We will have a good amount of floodlighting during the nighttime hours. Racing sports cars at night is a sight to behold. I have seen it before, at Daytona International Speedway. It's magic. The D'station Aston takes Juan Manuel Correa by surprise. This is actually Daniil Kvyat in the sister Prema car vs. Albert Costa. The Russian driver vs. the Spaniard driver. The lead gap overall is coming down. 31,9 seconds between Hartley and Kobayashi in both Toyota's. Track temperature has plummeted from 41 degrees Celsius to 34 degreees Celsius. In the darkness, the track will shed temperature. Drivers can start leaning on their tires a tad more.
Trouble and a lockup at Inter Europol. Albert Costa has locked up the car, jamming itself in gear. Control, Alt, Delete. Inter Europol having trouble. They can finish either second or third in the championship but of course they won Le Mans. That car will be retired. We don't know if they will be at Le Mans next year or not. Electronics hate three things. Heat, water, and vibration. Team WRT first and third in LMP2 and the #35 Alpine of Ollie Caldwall is chasing Ryan Cullen in a battle for ninth and tenth while Ferdinand Habsburg leads in LMP2. Teammate Sean Gelael says that everything is going well but their fingers are crossed that they can improve and try to finish.
Gelael will get into the car soon. WRT #31 and #41, if #31 wins the race, #41 wins the title. Valentino Rossi will be in the Sunday rookie test with Team WRT. We will talk about the rookie test tomorrow. Rossi has also won in SRO GT World Challenge with Maxime Martin and with Charles Weerts. Charles Weerts' dad Yves Weerts is the team boss. Thierry Tassin, Kurt Mollekens, and Vincent Vosse, three former drivers, are the braintrust of the team. What are we going to see from them next year? We'll have to see. Valentino Rossi could indeed race a GT3 car or maybe in a Hypercar. Former MotoGP rival to Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, he too, has also taken up car racing.
The #23 United Autosport LMP2 car is in the lane for service. Hypercar will explode and continue to grow. We have lots of former F1 drivers who could be in Hypercar. These categories are very niche too, like LMP2. Open wheel drivers have to come to grips with endurance racing because it is like apples and oranges. Albert Costa pits for Inter Europol. Drive through penalty for Mikkel Jensen for not respecting Full Course Yellow, aboard the #93 Peugeot 9X8. Recalcitrant right front tire on the Inter Europol car, or a dud rattle gun maybe.
The #38 Jota Porsche, Yifei Ye, has halved the gap to James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 499P. They are on the same hard Michelin tire compound as their rivals. Mikkel Jensen is running well aboard the #93 Peugeot 9X8 sharing with Jean Eric Vergne and with Paul di Resta. Because of the lack of a rear wing, the Peugeot runs lower than the other Hypercars. Porpoising is a huge issue. The same was true with the Audi R8 but to the drivers the car felt fine. Juan Manuel Correa has just vacated the #9 Prema car and into the car is Filip Ugran from Romania.
Ian James has just completed his drive time and handed the #98 Heart of Racing car to Daniel Mancinelli and then to Roman De Angelis later. Ben Keating still at the wheel of the #33 Cjevrp;et Cprvette C8.R. Drive through penalty for the Peugeot. Matteo Cairoli chasing Christian Ried. This is "Rexy" unlapping from the Dempsey Proton #77 Porsche. Matteo Cairoli vs. Christian Ried. A good battle between Josh Pierson and Filip Ugran in LMP2. Pit stop time too for the #28 Jota car of David Heinemeier Hanson. Heinemeier Hanson is an IT guru, a computer guru. Meanwhile, Ben Keating finishes his stint and finishes his WEC career for the time being.
Nico Varrone now into the car, into the #33. Ben Keating has been a phenomenal ambassador for sports car racing as he moves back to IMSA and LMP2. Some penatlies to catch up on. The #5 Penske Porsche and the LMP2 leading #31 WRT car will have time added and a drive through penalty for Simon Mann in the #21 Ferrari for track limits abuse. The #36 Alpine Oreca LMP2 is in the lane. Ben Keating says the track is so busy and so hard with the tire degradation. He had a hard time enjoying the last three stints he'll do in a GTE car.
He says the Corvette team just does not have the pace. "It's not looking good, but we can still be good looking" says Keating. Wow. That's a good one! He has run the last four seasons driving all GTE cars save for one. The confidential Michelin tires are really special and these cars are specifically designed for this series and he has squeezed as much juice out of the lemon as he can squeeze. We will miss Ben Keating in the FIA WEC paddock. The fight is on in Hypercar between Yifei Ye chasing and James Calado defending for third.
Calado says he is not going to fight. Justin Taylor says "don't make it easy for him." Calado is thinking of his own race. Calado has been a creature of habit when it comes to managing tires, recalling the GTE Pro days of yore. Ferdinand Habsburg doing a debrief at WRT. They are still in the LMP2 lead or were but they just served a penalty too. Thierry Tassin and Ferdinand Habsburg not seeing eye to eye and he says, "go see your team manager." Antonio Fuoco is in the lane for left side tires in the #50 Ferrari. Yifei Ye will want to get by James Calado. The gap is 30-32 seconds for the race lead it sounds like. Both Toyota's still at the top of the shop.
Ben Keating has thanked his whole crew. Keating has raced a Ferrari and did not race a BMW. Calado gets stymied and so does Ye, getting squeezed by the Dempsey Proton #77 Porsche 911 RSR-19. That was clumsy. Three tires changed on car #50 as now we see the #94 Peugeot 9X8 in the lane. Full service at Peugeot for Gustavo Menezes in his last race at Peugeot. He will have a new opportunity soon.
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