There wasn’t really much doubt in Bahrain that Toyota was going to seal another World Endurance Championship drivers’ crown to go with the manufacturers’ title it took last time out at Fuji. If there was a question mark, it was over which of its two crews was going to make it five in a row for the Japanese manufacturer. The shame for a championship that hasn’t quite delivered the intended spectacle in the maiden season of its so-called golden age, the Le Mans 24 Hours excepted, was that any uncertainty was pretty much removed at the first corner.
As Sebastien Buemi accelerated out of the opening sequence of corners and up the hill to Turn 4 at the start of last Saturday’s Bahrain 8 Hours, he could see mayhem in his mirrors. The first-corner dramas that he feared so much that he could barely sleep the night before affected team-mate Mike Conway rather than him. The #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar was tapped into a spin by a locked-up Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh with Earl Bamber at the wheel, and suddenly Buemi and team-mates Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa had a second hand on the end-of-season Hypercar championship trophy.
The grip of the first hand that had been resting on the silverware since Le Mans, when Buemi and co took second place, had tightened after qualifying when Hartley claimed pole position and the point that goes with it. Now the drivers of
