TF Sport Corvettes end on a high note in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) series finale at Bahrain
Tom Ferrier’s # 81 & # 82 Z06 GT3R Corvettes finished second and third in the BAPCO 8-hour finale at the 3.63-mile Sakhir desert circuit outside Manama, the capital of Bahrain, a Persian Gulf monarchy ruled by the Khalīfah family for the sake of trivia.
Drivers of the # 81 Tom Van Rompuy, Rui Andrade plus factory driver Charlie Eastwood; and the # 82 Hiroshi Koizumi, Sebastian Baud plus factory driver Daniel Juncadella celebrated their best-ever outings to date.
Eastwood and Andrade drove single stints starting from eighth to gain the lead at the end of the first driver rotation. Van Rompuy and Andrade drove double-stints in the middle of the race, only to fall behind others able to pit during safety car caution periods for fresher Goodyear tires.
Andrade survived and handed over to Eastwood with one hour and forty-five minutes to go that set the stage for Eastwood’s charge.
Juncadella in the # 82 Corvette in contrast actually benefited from a safety car caution period, taking on fresher rubber and working forward from tenth with about 90 minutes to go.
Both Corvettes made their final stops with about forty minutes to go to finish second and third.
The # 55 AF Corse Ferrari 296 LMGT3, driven by Simon Mann, François Heriau plus Prancing Horse factory driver Alessio Rovera won the race completing 214 laps.
The # 92 Manthey Porsche 911 LMGT3 driven by Alex Malykhin, Joel Sturm plus factory diver Klaus Bachler finished fifth having wrapped up the series championship well before the final 2 races at Fuji and Bahrain.
Looking back, the # 81 & # 82 TF Sport Corvettes got off to a slow start on March 2 at Qatar followed by inconsistent results circumventing the globe through Italy, Belgium, Le Mans, Brazil, the USA and Japan before the stellar performance in Bahrain helped them to score tenth and twelfth in the final standings for the 18-car LMGT3 class.
TF Sport goes into the 2025 season on a positive note on February 28 again at Qatar, by gosh another Persian Gulf monarchy, this one ruled by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the sake of trivia, just 90 minutes as the crow flies from where the WEC season will finish up at Bahrain.
Photo credits: WEC, TF Sport
