There are new champions in the sports car world as the #7 Toyota TS040 of Alexander Wurz, Stéphane Sarrazin and Mike Conway took victory in the 6 Hours of Bahrain, the penultimate round of the 2014 FIA World Endurance Championship. It is Toyota's fifth victory of the season but first for the #7 Toyota.
Porsche finished second and third with the #14 919 Hybrid of Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb finishing ahead of the #20 driven by Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brandon Hartley. This is the first time Porsche put both cars on the podium this season. The #2 Audi of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer finished fourth but will not be mathematically eligible for the title heading to the season finale at Interlagos in a fortnight. The #8 Toyota of Anthony Davidson and Sébastien Buemi have clinched the World Endurance Drivers' Championship despite only scoring a half point after suffering an alternator problem halfway through the race and finishing 11th overall. The #1 Audi of Tom Kristensen, Lucas di Grassi and Loïc Duval finished fifth.
In LMP2, the #47 KCMG Oreca-Nissan of Matthew Howson, Richard Bradley and Alexandre Imperatori picked up their second victory of the season but the bigger story has to do with the LMP2 championship. The #27 SMP Racing Oreca-Nissan of LMP2 championship leader Sergey Zlobin started smoking and laying down oil with less than twenty minutes to go due to a gearbox issue. Nicolas Minassian was behind the wheel of the car when it started smoking. The retirement handed the LMP2 championship lead to the #26 G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan of Olivier Pla, Julien Canal and Romain Rusinov as they finished fourth in class, third among teams register for the LMP2 title. The #37 SMP Racing Oreca-Nissan of Kirill Ladygin, Anton Ladygin and Viktor Shatter finished second with the #35 OAK Racing Morgan-Judd of Mark Patterson, David Cheng and Keiko Ihara finishing third.
Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander clinched the World Endurance Cup for GT Drivers with their fourth victory of the season. It is Bruni second consecutive GT world title and Vilander's first world title. The #51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia held off the #97 Aston Martin Vantage V8 of Stefan Mücke and Darren Turner by 1.879 seconds. The #71 AF Corse Ferrari of James Calado and Davide Rigon rounded out the podium. The #91 and #92 Porsche 911 RSRs rounded out the top five.
The GTE-Am title was decided as the #95 Aston Martin of David Heinemeier Hansson, Kristian Poulsen and Nicki Thiim won their fourth race of the season and continue their streak of eight consecutive podiums dating back to last season. The #81 AF Corse Ferrari finished second in class with Michele Rugolo, Stephen Wyatt and Andrea Bertolini sharing the driving duty. Aston Martin bookends the podium with the #98 driven by Paul Dalla Lana, Pedro Lamy and Christoffer Nygaard.
The final round of the 2014 FIA World Endurance Championship season will take place in a fortnight from Interlagos in São Paulo, Brazil.
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