#7 Toyota wins Bahrain 6H and extends points lead

Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez have taken victory in the Six Hours of Bahrain, thus extending their championship lead over their team-mates.

The #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid started the race from second place, but first briefly captured the lead in the first hour until Mike Conway went wide at turn one, allowing Sebastien Buemi’s #8 car to take the lead back.

Conway then took over the lead again in the second hour and maintained it from there. The victory for the Le Mans-winning trio was then sealed by a slow stop for the #8 Toyota in the fifth hour, which even briefly dropped Brendon Hartley behind the #36 Alpine A480-Gibson.

With the victory, their third in a row, Conway, Kobayashi and Lopez extends their points tally to 145 with one race remaining, 15 more than stablemates Buemi, Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima.

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Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere finished a distant third for Alpine.

Team WRT seize LMP2 lead with controlled win

Team WRT have taken the LMP2 lead away from JOTA with a controlled victory for the Belgian squad.

The #31 ORECA 07-Gibson started the race from seventh in class and took the lead of the race at the very end of the second hour. During a full course yellow, caused by debris on track from the #777 Aston Martin Vantage AMR, a faster fuel-only stop promoted Robin Frijns into the lead.

The team was also aided by an incident for the #28 JOTA ORECA 07-Gibson in the opening hour, when Sean Gelael made contact with the #98 Aston Martin Vantage AMR driven by Paul Dalla Lana.

While the JOTA trio was able to recover back up to second place, it was unable to prevent Frijns, Charles Milesi and Ferdinand Habsburg from taking their second win of the season.

The win comes after their Le Mans victory and boosts the Belgian squad’s points count to 113 points, with JOTA now on 108 points with only the Eight Hours of Bahrain still yet to be contested.

The second JOTA, the #38 ORECA of Roberto Gonzalez, Antonio Felix da Costa and Anthony Davidson, finished third thanks to a late pass from Antonio Felix da Costa on the #22 United Autosports ORECA ofPhil Hanson, Fabio Scherer and Filipe Albuquerque, which finished fourth.

Racing Team Nederland finished the race fifth and won the LMP2 Pro/Am category ahead of sixth-placed Realteam Racing.

Dragonspeed and Inter Europol Competition both had troubled, incident-filled races. The #21 Dragonspeed ORECA suffered electronics issues and notably lost a rear wheel.

Inter Europol Competition, meanwhile, suffered from a collision with United Autosports’ Albuquerque, struggled with the driver’s side door failing to close properly and were ordered to serve a four-minute penalty for a tire allocation infringement.

Porsche cruises to one-two

Porsche cruised to a one-two victory in Bahrain, remaining in formation for a significant portion of the six-hour contest.

The #92 Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Kevin Estre and Neel Jani started the race from pole and remained out front afternoon, with the #91 sister car of Richard Lietz and Gianmaria Bruni tucked in behind throughout.

The #51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo of Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado finished a distant third, with Daniel Serra and Miguel Molina fourth.

With the victory, Estre and Jani close right up behind the Ferrari pairing in the championship, with the difference between the #92 Porsche and #51 Ferrari only a single point with 38 points for the 8 Hours of Bahrain next weekend.

TF Sport takes long-awaited win

TF Sport have taken their first win in GTE Am since last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Ben Keating, Dylan Pereira and Felipe Fraga took the victory in the #33 Aston Martin Vantage AMR, ahead of the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Christian Ried, Jaxon Evans and Matt Campbell.

For TF Sport, it marks the first time they have won since their Le Mans class win last year. It also breaks a four-race undefeated streak for Ferrari in the category.

The Italian manufacturer had won all four of the previous rounds so far this year, with three wins for AF Corse and one for Cetilar Racing.

Egidio Perfetti, Matteo Cairoli and Riccardo Pera finished third in the #56 Team Project 1 Porsche 911 RSR-19, with the #98 NorthWest AMR Aston Martin Vantage AMR of Paul Dalla Lana, Augusto Farfus and Marcos Gomes fourth.

The top five was rounded out by the championship-leading #83 AF Corse Ferrari, which will maintain the points lead going into the championship decider next weekend.