World Endurance Championship
Toyota has won the final race of the 2017 World Endurance Championship in Bahrain thanks to the #8 TS050 of Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson, and Kazuki Nakajima.
The #8 crew kept out of trouble when others managed to find it to beat the #2 919 of New Zealanders Earl Bamber and Brendon Hartley and German Timo Bernhard by a lap in Porsche’s final LMP1 race.
Car #2 hit trouble early on when Bernhard managed to get a bollard stuck in the bodywork, necessitating a costly pit stop just 15 minutes into the six-hour race for the already-crowned world champions.
The sister #1 Porsche of Neel Jani, Andre Lotterer, and Nick Tandy completed the podium.
The #1 trio had taken pole position and was leading in the fourth hour when Tandy hit Australian Nick Foster while trying to lap the LMGTE Am class Porsche 911 RSR.
Tandy lost a lap when he had to pit as a result and was also slapped with a stop-go penalty for the incident.
Fourth went to the #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez, another two laps off the pace of the Porsches, after Kobayashi hit a GT Porsche at the half-hour mark.
Foster, Ben Barker, and Mike Wainwright ended up the last classified finisher in 25th in the Gulf Racing entry.
Rebellion Racing won the LMP2 teams’ title and Bruno Senna and Julien Canal the drivers’ title after they and Nicolas Prost won their class in fifth outright.
World Touring Car Championship
The World Touring Car Championship is set to go down to the wire after Rob Huff won the Main Race and Mehdi Bennani (Sebastien Loeb Racing Citroen) the Opening Race in the penultimate round in Macau.
The Opening Race was called early when Norbert Michelisz hit the wall and was collected by Castrol Honda team-mate Esteban Guerrieri, blocking the track.
With results backdated, Michelisz was classified in fifth, one position behind championship leader Thed Bjork (Polestar Cyan Racing Volvo).
Huff (Munnich Motorsport Citroen) staved off an early challenge from Michelisz in the Main Race, which started under Safety Car due to earlier rain.
Michelisz faced a challenge of his own from Tom Chilton (Sebastien Loeb Racing Citroen) but went on to finish second, with Bjork fifth.
Bjork leads the championship by just 6.5 points over Michelisz with the final round in Qatar on November 30-December 1.
Super Trofeo World Final
Richard Goddard and Brit Jack Bartholomew gave recorded results of 19th and eighth in the two races comprising the Super Trofeo World Final at Imola.
Queenslander Morgan Haber and Pole Jan Kisiel were a DNF in Race 1 and ninth position in Race 2, while Ben Gersekowski and Brit Rory Collingbourne were 18th and DNF respectively.
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