The FIA WEC rounds off under the lights of Bahrain with next season looking brighter still

Monday, November 04, 2024

That was the season that was on Saturday evening season 12 of the FIA’s World Endurance Championship concluded under the light of the Bahrain International Circuit and at the end of another gruelling eight round international campaign.

Even before the thirty six strong full season Hypercar and LMGT3 classes had even turned a wheel at this final eight hour round, we were already aware of the inaugural LMGT3 Championship title going the way of the #92 Manthey PureRxing Porsche 911 GT3 R crew leaving both the Heart of Racing and D’Station Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3 crews of Ian James/Alex Riberas/Daniel Mancinelli and Erwan Bastard/Clement Mateu/Marco Sorenson little to race for other the pride and personal development.

Having started the season so well at the opening round in Qatar with a double class podium for the two AMR teams, their racing endeavours with the latest version of the Vantage race car platform faired not so well over the remaining rounds and perhaps culminated with the #27 Heart of Racing car crashing out of a potential Le Mans 24hr podium winning position and onto its roof in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Obvious personal safety was all that mattered in that kind of scenario, and it was a relief to all to watch Mancinelli finally extricate himself from the car and be able to walk away unaided.

Whilst D’Station Racing P3 in Qatar was their best result of the season followed by a P9 at Le Mans for both Sorensen, Bastard along with a final cameo appearance from team owner Satoshi Hoshino, there was more to cheer from the American based Heart of Racing team within the AMR supported garage as a P2 in Brazil and a home win at CoTA gave the team class championship hope going into the penultimate round in Fuji but again that thing called Balance of Performance didn’t quite go in their favour.

With further (negative) changes for the AMR platform going into this weekend’s final round in Bahrain, the writing was kind of ‘on the wall’ as the two Aston Martin’s finished the season line astern to one another in P11 and P12 in class.

These results left the Heart of Racing crew in fifth overall whilst the D’Station crew (of Bastard/Sorensen) finished P11 with Mateu a few places further back having skipped out Le Mans in place of Hoshino.

Inevitably, as one season closes the workings of another immediately take over and whilst we understand that the D’Station Racing team will be stepping away from the FIA WEC to concentrate more upon their national Super GT Series endeavours, we also understand that Swiss based Racing Spirit of Leman may well be stepping into their shoes for 2025 with possibly part of the successful European Le Mans Series driver line up of Derek DeBoer and Valentin Hasse-Clot.

Then there is the Heart of Racing team who have already shown off their latest project in the form of an Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar in time for a duel commitment into the topflight classes of the WEC an IMSA Series. Indeed, one such platform will be circulating around Bahrain International today as part of a collective Michelin tyre test!!