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New Zealand’s Brendon Hartley has won his second consecutive FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar world drivers’ title.
Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa, and Sebastien Buemi put in a dominant performance in the final race of the season at the 8 Hours of Bahrain to secure the race and the title.
Hartley’s #8 Toyota GR010 H won from the pole and beat the sister #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez, and Kamui Kobayashi by 47.516 seconds.
Conway, Lopez, and Kobayashi went into the race 16 points adrift of the #8.
Disaster struck for the #7 on the opening lap when Earl Bamber in the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R hit Conway from the rear.
Toyota has now won three consecutive Hypercar drivers’ championships and clinched the manufacturer crown last month in Fuji.
The #50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, and Nicklas Nielsen rounded out the podium.
In the final WEC LMP2 race, the #41 Team WRT Oreca of Rui Andrade, Robert Kubica, and Louis Deletraz won the title
The sister #31 Team WRT entry finished second.
The #28 JOTA Oreca of Oliver Rasmussen, David Heinemeier Hansson, and Pietro Fittipaldi finished third.
The end of the LMGTE era came to an end with the completion of the GTE-Am race.
The #85 Iron Dames Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Michelle Gatting, Rahel Frey, and Sarah Bovy recorded a landmark first victory for an all-female crew in the WEC in GTE-Am.
The sister #60 car of Alessio Picariello, Matteo Cressoni, and Claudio Schiavoni led much of the race but had to retire in the late stages after Schiavoni fell ill and couldn’t meet drive time requirements
The #777 D’station Racing Aston Martin of Casper Stevenson, Liam Talbot, and Tomonobu Fujii finished second.
The #98 NorthWest AMR entry of Ian James, Daniel Mancinelli, and Alex Riberas completed the podium.
The 2024 season gets underway at the Prologue in Qatar on 24 February.
