WEC 8 Hours of Bahrain
FIA World Endurance Championship
The WEC has established itself as one of the premier championships under the International Automobile Federation (FIA) and the leading global series for endurance racing. It attracts countless stars in motorsport, and it continues to grow in popularity every year, with races taking place in eight countries across four continents.
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It was a heated battle for pole tonight at Bahrain International Circuit
It was a heated battle for pole tonight at Bahrain International Circuit, and at the end of one of the most intriguing and unpredictable qualifying sessions of the 2020 F1 season, Valtteri Bottas emerged as the last man standing.
Bottas will start at the front of the grid in the highly anticipated F1 Rolex Sakhir Grand Prix 2020 as it gets set to light up BIC’s 3.543-kilometre track for the first time.
He captured pole with a blistering lap of 53.377 seconds in Q3, beating out teammate George Russell—driving in place of Lewis Hamilton this weekend—by just 0.026 seconds to lock up the front row for Mercedes for the second successive weekend.
Qualifying behind them were Max Verstappen (+0.056s) of Red Bull Racing and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (+0.236s), while Sergio Perez (+0.413s) of Racing Point and Daniil Kvyat (+0.529s) of AlphaTauri secured the positions on row three.
Completing the top 10 will be Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo (+0.580s), McLaren’s Carlos Sainz (+0.633s), Pierre Gasly (+0.777s) in the second AlphaTauri and Lance Stroll (+0.823s) in the other Racing Point car.
Verstappen had earlier led the field after Q2 while Bottas was the top man at the end of Q1, both with sub-54 second times.
Q2 saw some disappointing exits for some after starting off the weekend with promising performances. Renault’s Esteban Ocon, Red Bull’s Alexander Albon, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi and McLaren’s Lando Norris all had their qualifying campaigns end there and will begin tomorrow’s race from 11th to 15th, respectively.
Eliminated from further contention in Q1 were Kevin Magnussen of Haas, Nicholas Latifi and Jack Aitken for Williams, Kimi Raikkonen in the other Alfa Romeo, and Pietro Fittipaldi in the second Haas car. They complete tomorrow’s start grid from 16th to 20th.
Aitken is driving in place of Russell this weekend while Fittipaldi is subbing for Romain Grosjean as he continues to recover from his horrifying crash at last weekend’s F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix.