Team principal Sam Hignett said fourth place, shared by Will Stevens, Yifei Ye and Antonio Felix da Costa in the Porsche 963 LMDh, effectively missed out on a top-three finish to the best-placed Ferrari 499P Le. Nevertheless, he maintained that the results were still strong. Mann’s Hypercar as a result of a drive-through penalty.
He pointed out that Saturday’s Bahrain 8 Hours was only Jota’s fifth start for Porsche, which started the 2023 season at Spa at the end of April after two races.
“If you had asked me back then if I would have fought for the podium with Ferrari and finished nine tenths of a second after eight hours of racing, I would have said yes,” Hignett told Motorsport.com.
“This is a good result for us and the whole team should be happy.”
He then mentioned the unassuming location where the team’s workshops were being held.
“We’re farm boys competing with Maranello’s mighty budget and a budget that’s probably a tenth of that,” Hignett added.
“I think our car overtook Ferrari five times during the race, so how could we be disappointed?”
Stevens briefly ran third in the opening hour, with Ye in fourth. Da Costa then began to charge, passing Nicklas Nielsen in the #50 car and heading towards Mike Conway in second place in the Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH.
Photo credit: Shameem Farhas
Jota struggled with his brakes in the Bahrain heat.
He came within 12 seconds of Conway before making a pit stop midway through a double stint, then went off the track at Turn 1 soon after.
Jota’s car was given a drive-through penalty after re-merging unsafely in front of the D’Station GTE Am Aston Martin.
Hignett said, “I had no complaints about Antonio getting sent off because he was trying very hard,” but he questioned the penalty he received.
“We are not happy with this penalty because these cars fitted with HANS devices make it difficult for drivers to see outside,” he explained.
It was also pointed out that the instructions in the driver’s briefing for cars departing from Turn 1 were to immediately return to the track, rather than continuing on the asphalt and returning to the circuit at a less acute angle at the exit of Turn 3. did. End of corner start sequence.
Stevens returned to the cockpit of the Jota Porsche for the run to the flag, closing the gap from more than eight seconds after the final pit stop to 0.962 seconds at the checkered flag.
Ignet also revealed that Jota Porsche had experienced brake problems towards the end of the race, but the team decided to “just do it” rather than try to take care of the brakes.