Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Motorsports fever is set to spread across the island in November when racers from all over the globe, including former Bahrain-based resident Sébastien Buemi, compete in the Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain — the final round of this year’s FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Buemi, who will be visiting Bahrain with his wife Jennifer and his three children Jules, seven, Theo, five, and five-month-old Hugo this month, is looking forward to racing on the Bahrain International Circuit’s track yet again ... in the island he still calls home.
“We have raced in Bahrain many times, so we know the track quite well,” said the 34-year-old Swiss driver for Toyota Gazoo Racing in his number eight Toyota GR010-Hybrid car.
“It’s going to be quite special racing in Bahrain and in this championship because we will be racing in day light and finishing at night.”
The mega motor sporting spectacle, to be held from November 2 to 4, will include the Hypercar FIA World Endurance Drivers’ Championship, which could still mathematically be won by four different crews, as well as the LMP2 teams’ and drivers’ championships, which will see Team WRT, Inter Europol Competition and United Autosports in the top three.
Bahrain will also form the final event for the LMP2 and GTE Am classes, meaning WEC, from 2024 onwards, will be made up of two categories - Hypercar and the all-new GT3 machinery.
“It’s going to be one of the first years that we have so many manufacturers involved in the Hypercar, which is obviously the top category with Ferrari, Peugeot, Cadillac, Porsche and Toyota,” shared Buemi.
“Next year, with the arrival of Alpine, Lamborghini and BMW, it’s going to be one of the best championships with the highest amount of manufacturers involved.”
As Buemi said, the new WEC Hypercar class, which is top-class endurance racing, currently does have multiple manufacturers in the category. The WEC replaced its LMP1 category with the Hypercar class in 2021 and has not looked back since.
Buemi’s team Toyota has been competing in the FIA WEC since the very first season, sticking with the world championship for sports car prototypes. However, the Japanese manufacturer did jump on the Hypercar bandwagon at a relatively early stage and secured second place in the inaugural FIA Hypercar World Endurance Championship in 2021.
Buemi, who is excited to be staying with his uncle Humbert, president of Buemi & Sons Company and Swiss Honorary Consul General to the Kingdom of Bahrain since February 2013, and aunt Sylvia and cousins Frederic, 27, and Steve, 25, in Budaiya, urges motoring aficionados to check out the race if they’ve never seen it before.
“I’d love for people to come and discover the race,” added the Test and Reserve Driver at Red Bull Racing.
“If you’ve never been to this race before, it’s an amazing event with lots of fun activities for kids and families. I think it would be great if we get the people to know, learn and discover WEC and the racing world in general.”
During the official WEC launch event, BIC’s chief executive Shaikh Salman bin Isa Al Khalifa shared that ‘the WEC offers fans an incredible mix of World Championship racing, exciting entertainment and family fun’.
“With an open paddock, and an amazing line of cars including the debut of Ferrari and Porsche in the Hypercar category, the Spirit of Le Mans is well and truly back in Bahrain,” he said. “To be hosting the WEC season-finale for a fourth straight year is a tremendous honour, and we thank the WEC and its partners for trusting us to stage this wonderful occasion, where we can celebrate the series’ 2023 champions.”
