Mike Conway won the Bapco 8 Hours of Bahrain on Saturday after surviving a first lap melee that saw the Ginetta of Charlie Robertson and Rebellion of Bruno Senna take each other out.
The Briton slipped through the chaos to take the lead of the race and went on to win by over ahead of the sister Toyota. Speaking to Motorsport Week after the race, Conway explained how he managed to get through the incident.
"I was kind of looking for Seb [Buemi] initially, making sure we didn't get too close into two," said Conway. "And then I just saw Robertson lose the rear end and I was like 'oh s***', so I backed out and once I saw him go across the track and out of the way, I made sure I had enough space to come out tight."
After the first lap incident, a safety car was brought out, which left Conway alone with the LMP2 front runners since all of his rivals had either been hit, or lost ground trying to avoid the clashing pair of Senna and Robertson.
"And then I actually had some pressure from the LMP2s because we had a lot of fuel cuts and not much boost on the first lap," Conway continued. "So really had to kind of defend a little bit, the first half a lap and after that, just get my head down, and then the safety car, just get a good clean start and pull away, which was nice, nice to do."
The result means that Conway and team-mates Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi now lead the championship in LMP1, eight points ahead of the #8 trio of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima.
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