It all comes down to 8 Hours in Bahrain
That's just over 10 hours of the total racing time in the FIA World Endurance Championship, for both the manufacturers and drivers titles to be settled.
As a reminder, Porsche lead in both, with the #6 Porsche crew of Andre Lotterer, Kevin Estre, and Laurens Vanthoor currently ahead in the drivers championship, and the Porsche team ahead in the manufacturers.
The drivers title is almost settled — the #50 Ferrari needs to win the race in order to have any hope of winning, and even then the #6 Porsche needs to finish ninth or below.
But in the manufacturers battle, there's only 10 points separating Porsche and Toyota, with Ferrari a further seven back from the latter.
Toyota locked out the front row in qualifying, putting them in the driving seat, with the Porsches only sixth and seventh.
Qualifying is one thing, race is another
Brendon Hartley told media in the post-qualifying that Porsche 'had looked a bit quicker on the long runs' and, indeed, The Racing Line's own analysis has found similar.
In the graph below, we've averaged out the top 20% of laps for each car from both practice sessions, FP1 and FP2. We've then found each car's best session average, from either session, and presented them both on the graph.
What it shows is that the two Toyotas and Porsches are very similar on race pace, within a tenth or two when measured by either metric. The #6 Porsche was the quickest out of the four cars in practice, with the #7 Toyota close behind and then the #5 Porsche and #8 Toyota — the polesitters – a little way back, but closely matched.
However, the quickest average overall was actually set by the #15 BMW crew of Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello and Marco Wittmann.
When The Racing Line spoke to D. Vanthoor, he told us that he hadn't been focused on race pace in practice.
"I think Lello [Marciello] and Marco [Wittmann] are more making sure that the car is race-prepped," he said, just an hour before FP3 was due to take place.
"My focus is just to get the car as good as I can for my qualifying run. For sure, we do this as well as a group, but they for sure have more priority on the long runs and on the older tyre runs.
"Even though, I say that, but I actually go into an old tyre run as well now [in FP3], so I'll probably I'll probably figure that out as well."
Elsewhere in the individual car averages, Ferrari are in the mix with Porsche, Toyota, and now BMW. Meanwhile, towards the back, it's not looking particularly encouraging for Alpine, Peugeot, Lamborghini and Cadillac, either in prospective race pace, or qualifying.
All six cars failed to make it into Hyperpole, and they sit out of the top 1o in the race pace averages.
And, finally in this section, a word for Proton. They've struggled this year for pace, but it's looking like it might be coming together at Bahrain. In practice they appeared to hold an advantage over the Penske-run factory cars, and they outqualified the other Porsches too on Saturday afternoon/evening.
Neel Jani told The Racing Line after qualifying that he felt it was all finally coming together after a tough few races for Proton.
'I'm very happy for myself,' he said when asked by The Racing Line for his reaction after qualifying.
'But tomorrow's a different story. I hope we can repeat what we did in Spa. It took us some time to come back from Spa, because after that, we struggled.
'Nevertheless I think if we can operationally get all the things together we can be strong. But as I said, we are the only private team that is so small, with one car.
'Operationally, is not easy for us. And that's not because people make mistakes, or they're not good enough. It's just we don't test, we have to learn it on the fly.
'If we get things together, we can be there because the driver lineup is good enough to do it.
'We managed at Spa. Then always, we had little things coming in and I hope really tomorrow, we can get it all together again,' he concluded.
He said, she said
While Toyota are tipping Porsche to have the edge on race pace — a fact backed up by TRL's own analysis, although Toyota are very close behind — Porsche were quick to bat it right back at Toyota.
'I think it's a little bit bold to say whether we're going to be "the ones" in the race, because it's only practice, it's so hard to tell,' said Matt Campbell, who qualified the #5 Porsche seventh on the grid.
'Everyone's doing different tyre strategies and approaches, and there's so many heat cycles. And also, you're trying to develop the car a little bit too.
'So I don't think any of us know exactly what to expect when it comes to the race. I mean, of course we would like to think we're going to be the benchmark, but you never know until you get towards the last 10 laps of the stint, because obviously that's where everyone really starts to struggle.
'Tomorrow will be will be difficult, for the first three or four hours of the race. Once it gets a little bit cooler and get into the night time, with no sun, it'll be a different story.
'But yeah, I think there'll be many different approaches and just be about being smart, and looking after your tyres,' he concluded.
Bahrain is a track notorious for being very heavy on tyres. The surface is very abrasive, leading to high tyre degradation. You then factor in the high air and track temperatures, with direct sunlight on the track for, as Campbell said, the first three or four hours of the race. And, finally, the track is also very high energy, putting a lot of stress through the sidewalls of the tyres, causing them to heat up quicker and wear faster.
So, that means that even if Porsche do have a race-pace edge, they may lose out on tyre degradation. Toyota are generally thought within the paddock to be best on keeping the tyres alive during a stint, which will be vital to winning after the 8 hours has elapsed on Sunday.
But, Porsche will know that if Toyota win the race, they can win the manufacturers title. With only the highest-scoring car claiming points in the manufacturers title, if Toyota win and Porsche finish second — Toyota wins the title.
Clearly, starting up front will be a big advantage to Toyota. But, over 8 hours, everything can change, especially at a race which runs into the night, starting at 2pm local time and running until 10pm.
A final stat to end on: no car which has qualified on pole this year in WEC has gone onto win the race. So, if that stays true, it counts out the #8 Toyota for the win. Is that good or bad for Porsche? Let's see on Saturday.
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