Ahead of its step up to the Hypercar class in 2023, Ferrari signed off the GTE Pro division of FIAWEC in style. gazzasportscars explains how the marque got its hobbled car home to clinch the title in Bahrain. Feature:
Twelve months ago, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado claimed the GTE title in controversial circumstances in Bahrain. This time around there was no late contact with a championship rival or any contentious calls from race control. But it was no less dramatic and certainly far more nerve-racking for the Ferrari duo as they attempted to retain their crown as well as the manufacturers’ gong for their employer.
“I suddenly had no fourth gear,” explained Calado. “The problem was that without fourth you couldn’t downshift to third or upshift to fifth without using the clutch. Then it was a matter of trying to find a way to change gear, which involved going back to right-foot braking and the old heel-and-toe.”
“When I got back in the car I tried to just skip fourth gear, so first, second and third and then with the clutch I got fifth and sixth,” he said. “Then I realised that the temperature of the gearbox was going super-high like this; it was right on limit. Fortuitous FCY timing helped lift the Milner and Tandy's Corvette into second, crucially denying Porsche the titleA runner-up spot for the Chevy shared by Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner didn’t look likely after qualifying, which explains why the Briton described second as a “massive result”. He’d qualified down in fifth, no less than 1.4s off the pace after a Balance of Performance change against the Corvette. It went into the Bahrain race with an engine air restrictor 0.
“It wasn’t that we found anything for the race; it was more that the Porsches seemed to lose something,” explained Tandy. “We were never in the fight with the Ferraris, but we could genuinely race the Porsches.” “We knew we really had to win the race to take the championship, so we went into the race with an aggressive strategy,” explained Estre. “We had to try something different to beat the Ferraris, because their tyre degradation was always going to be better than ours on this track.”
Estre and Christensen would have ended up fourth in championship race behind both Fuoco and Molina as well as Bruni had #91 finished ahead of #92. But Porsche opted to swap the positions of its two cars on the final lap. Hartley had taken pole by the better part of a second: he was eight tenths up on second-placed Paul di Resta in the best of the Peugeot 9X8s and nine tenths ahead of Conway. Buemi led from di Resta to the first round of pitstops, before the Toyotas ran 1-2, never much more than five seconds apart, for two more stints. Hartley was then asked to cede position to Conway straight after pitting in the middle of his double-stint.
Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa took a routine second place behind the sister #7 crew to secure the title in their #8 ToyotaPeugeot again could finish no better than fourth and again suffered a DNF, though a car that had received a 12kg BoP weight break was closer to the pace than ever. Not only did di Resta claim a front-row spot, but he ran second to the first round of stops. Team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne also claimed fastest race lap.
“You need a quick car for the last four hours,” said Project 1 tech chief Richard Selwin. “We set up the cars for that and had the quicks in to make the most of it.” “The car was on a completely different level to the other LMP2s,” said Rast. “We were by far the quickest out there. I didn’t believe how quickly I could pass the other cars. Then it was about managing the lead.”
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