Toyota retains its crowns after its weakness in Bahrain

Toyota achieved a new double on Saturday in eight hours in Bahrain, the sixth and final round of the World Endurance Championship (WEC), ahead of the Alpine and Peugeot race, enough to ensure the Japanese company secures two new world titles for drivers and constructors.

Toyota N.8 settled from Swiss Sebastien Buemi, New Zealander Brendon Hartley and Japan’s Rio Hirakawa, winners of the Le Mans 24 Hours race in June, in second place, behind sister car, N.7 Britain’s Mike Conway, Japan’s Kamui Kobayashi and Argentina’s Jose Maria Lopez.

But this result nonetheless allows Buemi to take the third world drivers’ title, a first for Hartley and Hirakawa.

The Conway-Kobayashi-Lopez trio, crowned twice in a row in 2019-2020 and then in 2021, finished third in the drivers’ standings.

Winner of the Drivers’ Championship in 2014 alongside Britain’s Anthony Davidson, Buemi, who was also Formula Electric champion in 2016, claimed his second title in 2018 with Spain’s two-time Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso, and Japan’s Kazuki Nakajima.

The podium, two laps apart, was completed by the Alpine N.36 of France’s Nicolas Lapierre and Mathieu Växvere, backed by Brazilian Andre Negrao, who finished second in the drivers’ championship. The French brand, very regularly on top, took the second place among manufacturers, after the untouchable Japanese.

For the third race of Peugeot’s return to endurance racing, fourth place, five laps behind the winning team, went to the Peugeot 9X8 hypercar of Frenchman Loic Duval, American Gustavo Menezes and Swiss Nico Muller. The other 9X8, shared by Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne, Dean Mikkel Jensen and Briton Paul di Resta, was forced to retire due to a gearbox failure.

In the final classification of the world championship, the victory of Buemi and his teammates in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which was counted twice, was decisive. And Toyota finished with a score of 4 to 2 for the Alpine, which was not worthy of an older generation car.

Peugeot, winner of Le Mans in 1992, 1993 and 2009, is back in endurance racing this year. Toyota, Peugeot and Alpine will soon join the first category of hypercars, Porsche, Ferrari, Audi, BMW, Cadillac and Lamborghini.