Hartley puts #8 Toyota on Pole for Bapco 8hrs of Bahrain

Text & Images: Rick Kiewiet

Brendon Hartley will depart tomorrow's Bapco 8hrs of Bahrain from p1. He qualified his GR010 he shares with Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa almost half a second ahead of the sister car, the #7, driven by Jose Maria Lopez, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi. The BoP changes for the LMDh platform seem to benefit Cadillac as Bamber, Lynn and Westbrook pick up their best qualifying result of the season with a p3.

Porsche also managed to qualify one car ahead of the #50 and #51 Ferrari: Estre, Lotterer and Vanthoor will begin the race ahead of the red squadron in the #6 Penske. All other Porsches are directly behind the Ferrari's, first the #5 Penske, followed by the #99 Proton and #38 Jota. Bit of a disappointing result for Peugeot, as the gap to the Porsches in front is over half a second. Vanwall carried the red lantern in the hyperclass class and starts from p11, more than a second behind the #94 Peugeot.

The Pole sitter in LMP2 is the #23 United Autosports Oreca of Pierson, Blomqvist and Jarvis. In the last race of Alpine in LMP2, the crew picks up p2 with the #36 of Milesi, Vaxivière and Canal. Robin Frijns, Sean Galeal and Ferdinand Habsburg claimed p3 in the #31 WRT. Leaders in the championship Kubica, Andrade and Deletraz (#41 WRT) qualified as far down as p10, while their closest competitors in the #34 Intereuropol car qualified p7.

The Iron Dames will commence the race from the GTE AM pole, as Sarah Bovy put in the fastest lap, just ahead of Liam Talbot in the #777 Aston Martin. Al Harty qualified the #25 Aston in p3.