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Lovers of motorsport in Bahrain may have felt a little torn this weekend given the first-of-its-kind conflict between F1 and the WEC-driven 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Many may have physically been in Baku (with Bahrain’s marshalls tasked with overseeing the race) to watch Lewis Hamilton ruin his chances in qualifying with ‘his worst performance ever’ to hand Nico Rosberg a comfortable victory.
However, while it was a deliberate move by the FIA, they were considerate enough to ensure that the races themselves did not overlap. Controversially it was designed to prevent F1’s drivers from racing in both events!
While Baku’s ancient walls provided a stunning backdrop to a largely processional race, as our coverage on the face page shows, the climax to the 24-hours could not have been more spectacular.
Le Mans is a race with the richest racing history, rewarded by a remarkable 263,000 spectators attending, the racing faithful scattered across the French countryside, who had braved some of the worst weather experienced since the very first race in 1923.
It was so wet (over 8cm of rain fell over the weekend) that final qualifying was stopped and even the safety car span out of control. It was a glitzy affair with Hollywood star Brad Pitt waving the start flag for the 84th running of the biggest event in sportscar racing.
He had earlier enjoyed a full lap on the Le Mans 24 Hours circuit with a Pescarolo Prototype driven by Austria’s Alex Wurz, two-time winner and Grand Marshal for the event. As the race entered its final hour, the No 5 Toyota TS 050 with Kazuki Nakajima at the wheel had a 20-second lead on the No 2 Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Neel Jani.
The final pit stop went off without a hitch for both teams, Porsche bringing in the car on the 373rd lap for refuelling only meaning that Jani would be using the same tyres for his teams’ fourth consecutive stint! Their closest challenger and the race leader was tracking their moves and adopting a similar strategy.
Toyota, on lap 374, refuelled but did not change tyres. The Japanese car’s tyres were then on their third stint and, combined with a faster pit stop, were able to emerge on fresher rubber and with an extended 30-second lead. However, with just three minutes of the 1,440 remaining, disaster struck as the Toyota was heading for victory and suddenly ground to a halt, Nakajima sitting there just before the finish line, had to watch the Porsche sail past.
After several nail-biting moments it managed to limp across the line only to be disqualified for not completing the last lap within the six-minute time limit. In the end, the No 6 Toyota TS050 Hybrid and the No 8 Audi R18 took second and third.
This was Jani’s first win for Porsche but the team’s 18th, coming 46 years after their first victory at this historic race. Toyota would have been only the second Japanese manufacturer to win the greatest prize in sportscar racing, after Mazda in 1991, but instead finished as runners-up for the fifth time.
Nakajima had shared the stricken number five Toyota TS050 hybrid car with Britain’s Anthony Davidson and Switzerland’s Sebastien Buemi, a former resident of Bahrain who still has close family living in the kingdom. “I literally have no words,” said Davidson on Twitter, reporting that Nakajima had said he was ready to cry as he crossed the line.
The Toyota pit crew beat him to that as well, the heartbreak evident across the garage. The No 2 Porsche 919 Hybrid driven by Romain Dumas (his second win), Neel Jani and Marc Lieb amassed a remarkable 5,274 kilometers – at that pace they would have reached Baku with enough time to have a relaxing massage, spot of lunch and tour the listed world heritage sites in the city before F1 started!
This was not quite the closest finish in history – that came in 1966 when there were only 20 metres separating the two Fords of Amon/McLaren and Miles/ Hulme.
