Contributor: Atharie Al Salem
The World Endurance Championship is the biggest endurance racing series in the world with a 33 car grid and four categories: Hypercar, LMP2, LMGTE PRO, and LMGTE AM. The grid consists of several drivers per car, where each car competes against each other for the Driver’s Championship, and each team battles it out for the Constructor’s championship.
The results came in this race weekend on 6th November, 2021 where all the action packed racing took place on the Bahrain International Circuit of 8 hours non-stop.
The grid began the race with a rolling start, and everything kicked off in the first three laps, where Toyota #8 claimed P1 off the #7 pole sitters in a wheel to wheel overtake. The Alpina Elf Matmut Hypercar #36 claimed P1 in an exciting battle for the win against the reigning Toyota Gazoo Racing champions. This did not last long as the Alpine later suffered from a gearbox issue and had to retract back in its places, leaving the position to Buemi in #8 Toyota Hypercar, a fast contender for the first position in the second hour.
Over the 8 hours, #8 Toyota finished first with Kazuki Nakajima taking the victory in his final WEC race, the driver retiring with a triumph to celebrate. The #7 of Kobayashi, Lopez and Conway won the overall Hypercar driver’s championship title. Team WRT won the LMP2 title with a stellar victory in such a competitive classification, the #31 Oreca 07-Gibson made its way from a P7 on the grid to the leader in its category.
The most controversial part of the race was the GTE Pro title taken by AF corse after a hit by the Ferrari on the #92 Porsche 911 RSR-19 which spun them out and took them out of winning position. The controversy is backed by the Ferrari-Porsche debate of the unfair Balance of Performance that the Porsche cars have over the AF Corse ferrari cars, as FIA set some standards that invoked negative responses from fans worldwide. Alessandro Pier Guidi clinched the win as he refused to give back the position to Porsche’s driver Christensen and the win was debated over the entire night by the race stewards on what action to take on this tricky incident, where finally the winners were the Italian team.
The season finale was celebrated with a spectacular afterparty for the winners of the season titles, accompanied by huge trophies, fire displays and their families cheering them on. Bahrain’s first ever World Endurance Championship double header brought out a fascinating end to season 9 of this international series, and spectators of all different nationalities joined to cheer on their teams from the grandstands. This concludes Bahrain’s international BIC events for the year, yet begins a glamorous start of the new racing season this winter.
