Bahrain set for World Endurance Championship spectacle

TDT | Manama    

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A stacked field of 36 cars will be lining up on the grid at Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) this weekend for this year’s Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain.

The ultra-competitive entry list for the final round of the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) is set to be headlined by a record-breaking 12 Hypercars, along with 11 contenders in the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class and another 13 in the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Am (LMGTE Am) category.

The world-class competitors will be hitting the tarmac at “The Home of Motorsport in the Middle East” as the Spirit of Le Mans makes its presence felt in Sakhir in a massive way.

The action starts tomorrow with the WEC’s first two 90-minute practice sessions to be held behind closed doors.

BIC will then open its gates to fans on Friday and Saturday for them to see endurance motorsport’s best teams and drivers in action in their iconic and technologically superior Hypercars and sportscars.

Gates are scheduled to be open from 11am to 6.30pm on Friday and from 10.30am to 10.30pm on Saturday.

This year’s Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain will yet again be a brilliant spectacle for all those attending and watching on television from across the globe.

The race on Saturday will flag off under the afternoon sun and then wrap up beneath the stars while shining brightly under BIC’s state-of-the-art floodlights.

With over a decade of racing history at BIC, the WEC has grown to become a landmark event in Bahrain.

The 36-car field is one of the largest for the WEC race since it switched to an eight-hour format in 2019. This year, the Hypercar category will be more hotly contested than ever.

Toyota Gazoo Racing and Peugeot TotalEnergies will be making their return to Bahrain, and they will be joined in the Hypercar battles for the first time at BIC by Ferrari AF Corse, Porsche Penske Motorsport, Cadillac Racing, Floyd Vanwall Racing Team, Hertz Team JOTA, and Proton Competition.

Toyota Gazoo Racing, Peugeot TotalEnergies, Ferrari AF Corse and Porsche Penske Motorsport will each have two cars taking to the track—all Hybrids.

Hertz Team JOTA, Proton Competition and Cadillac Racing will be racing single Hybrid challengers, while Floyd Vanwall Racing Team will compete in their Vanwall Vandervell 680.

A star-studded cast of drivers across the board will be plotting their race strategies.

They include former Formula 1 aces Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Kamui Kobayashi, Paul Di Resta, Jean-Eric Verge and Antonio Giovinazzi in the Hypercar category; and Robert Kubica and Daniil Kvyat in the LMP2 class, among others.

The LMP2 category will see plenty of heated action amongst the 11 Oreca 07-Gibsons.

United Autosports, Alpine Elf Team, Prema Racing and Team WRT will each have two cars in contention, to be joined by Vector Sport, JOTA and Inter Europol Competition with one car each.

The LMGTE Am category features the WEC’s biggest line-up of entries, taking to the track in the most iconic sportscar machinery.

Among the participants is the all-female crew of Sarah Bovy, Michelle Gatting and Rahel Frey, who are sharing the duties in their Porsche 911 RSR-19 as the Iron Dames team.

The other squads competing in Porsches are Project 1-AO, Iron Lynx, Dempsey-Proton Racing and GR Racing.

Taking to the track in Ferrari 488 GTE EVO cars are two AF Corse crews, Kessel Racing and Richard Mille AF Corse. ORT by TF, Northwest AMR and D’Station Racing will each be competing in Aston Martin Vantage AMR challengers; while Corvette Racing will be getting into the fight in their Chevrolet Corvette C8.R.