Ryo Hirakawa and the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid maintain a comfortable lead in the Bahrain 8 Hours with about 2 hours remaining.
Jose María López in the #7 Toyota car ensures the Japanese brand maintains a very comfortable 1-2 as the race moves towards the end of time.
The #38 Hertz Team Jota Porsche, driven by Antonio Guerix da Costa, had a chance of finishing on the podium, but the Portuguese driver of the 963 rejoined unsafely at Turn 2, resulting in a drive-through penalty. As a result, he fell off the podium. The issue at hand.
This allowed the two Ferraris to leapfrog Jota Porsche, with Niklas Nielsen in the #50 499P in 3rd place and Antonio Gobinazzi in the #51 Ferrari in 4th place.
Despite the drive-through, da Costa’s #38 Porsche still led the Stuttgart brand, and after the penalty he rejoined behind Giovanazzi, caught and passed the #51 Ferrari and regained fourth place. .
Da Costa then began a hot pursuit behind Nielsen to regain his podium spot, and by the end of six hours the two were in a close race.
As da Costa continued to attack Nielsen to no avail, fifth place Giovinazzi also began to close in on the two cars and a pit stop was soon made.
After six hours of running, Andre Lotterer in the No. 6 Porsche is in 6th place, followed by Nico Müller in the Peugeot No. 94 9X8 and Michael Christensen in the No. 5 Porsche.
There was some drama in LMP2 as the #9 Prema Oreca 07 – Gibson front-runner Bento Viscar was tagged to the front members of the GTE Am pack, namely Daniel Mancinelli’s #98 Northwest AMR Aston Martin on vault in Turn 1. His prototype machine spun.
The #98 car was then given a drive-through penalty, narrowing its chances of competing for the GTE Am victory.
At the end of the six-hour race, the #9 Prema is still in the hunt, with Juan Manuel Correa in second place behind leader Ferdinand Habsburg in the #31 WRT entry – Daniil Kibat 07 – Gibson occupies the top three positions in LMP2 with the second #63 Prema Oreca.
In GTE Am, the #60 Iron Lynx Porsche 911 RSR – 19 car retired after taking the lead in its category. This was due to bronze driver Claudio Schiavoni being unwell and unable to drive, contrary to category regulations.
This gave the advantage to Rahel Frei’s No. 85 Iron Dames Porsche, which took the GTE Am lead with just over 2 hours and 20 minutes remaining.
Second place in the GTE Am after Frey was taken by Tomonobu Fuji’s No. 777 D’Station Racing Aston Martin Vantage, and third place went to Charlie Eastwood in the #25 ORT BY TF Aston, which utilized an offset pit strategy.