The championship-leading Porsche has claimed the final pole position of the season for the Bahrain 6 Hours to take a clean sweep of poles in 2015 and move drivers Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber one step closer to the title.
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Hartley’s auto experienced technical problems during the endurance race but a fifth-place finish was enough to secure the title.
The title-contending Audi driven by Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer will start from third in Bahrain after fending off the second Audi machine, while the two Toyotas once again trailled in fifth and sixth respectively. At each race the Porsche Team has taken pole position and the second spot on the grid.
The Australian-New Zealand-German trio, who had to make two unscheduled pit stops, prevailed by five points to became Porsche’s first world sportscar champions since 1986.
The No. 2 Toyota TS040 Hybrid of Mike Conway, Kazuki Nakajima and Alex Wurz, in his final race, completed the podium in third, benefiting from the attrition-filled race, but enjoying its best run of the season.
LMP1 privateer honours were taken by the #13 Rebellion-AER R-One of Alexandre Imperatori, Dominik Kraihamer and Matheo Tuscher, which was enough to give them second place in the class points ahead of ByKolles CLM-AER P1/01 drivers Pierre Kaffer and Simon Trummer.
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In LMP2, the Signatech Alpine-Nissan of Nelson Panciatici, Paul-Loup Chatin and Tom Dillmann led the way from the G-Drive Ligier-Nissan of Sam Bird, Roman Rusinov and Julien Canal. It marked the Russian-backed team’s first world title after losing it in the season-ending race past year.
