WEC – Championships: Porsche makes the break in Hypercar and takes the LMGT3 title

To each his due: with its 2nd place at the 6 Hours of Fuji, the Manthey PureRx team, on the Porsche N°92, won the teams and drivers titles, as N°91 (Manthey EMA) had a flat tire and plummeted to 14th place.

The finding is clear: with a 46-point lead and 39 points still to be distributed, Aliaksandr Malykhin, Joel Sturm, and Klaus Bacheler have the necessary advantage to be crowned in LMGT3. This is not a world title, as there is no LMGT3 World Championship.

Porsche N°91 from Manthey EMA will have to defend its 2nd place to offer Porsche a double in the championship: BMW N°31 only gained one point in Fuji (10th) and is fifteen points behind in 2nd place in the standings. The 8 Hours of Bahrain will be decisive for the final 2nd place. Certainly with a lot of spectacle in every way!

In Hypercar, the favorites have slipped up

Car number 7 Toyota had gone on the hunt for Porsche number 6 to try to stop the bleeding of points. And the outcome of the 6 Hours of Fuji certainly propelled Kévin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, and André Lotterer towards the world title.

Arriving 13th, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries lost everything in the collision with Porsche No. 5 and are now 3rd, 37 points behind. Mike Conway, who missed Le Mans, is not competing for the drivers’ title. And Ferrari No. 50, only 9th, is now 35 points behind Porsche No. 6. With still 39 units to be distributed at the 8 Hours of Bahrain, the game is almost over.

But nothing is decided yet among the constructors: Porsche is still in the lead, but Toyota is honking in second place, just ten points behind. It must be said that the two Japanese teams, No. 7 and No. 8, are more frequently at the forefront together, while Porsche No. 5 is more often lagging behind than No. 6.

Ferrari still has a shot, from third place, trailing by 27 points. But both Maranello’s cars (No. 50 and No. 51) will need to pull off a major feat in Bahrain, and their rivals will need to stumble.

Finally, on the French side, Alpine missed the opportunity to break away from BMW: car #35 was in 3rd place at the 6 Hours of Fuji, before a collision with a Corvette condemned it to a drive-through penalty. Car #36, on the other hand, finished in 3rd place, but BMW #15 came 2nd, thus gaining some points back. The Dieppe brand is still in a superb 4th place, but the Bavarian manufacturer has closed the gap to three points.

And Peugeot, with the 4th place of No. 93, made a leap forward, counting “only” 18 points behind Alpine. And if the Bahrain weekend offered a last crazy race, the fight for the P4 constructors’ position could be exciting.

Finally, in the Hypercar World Cup, Team Jota gives Porsche a dream farewell before becoming Cadillac’s factory team next year: No. 12 (Nato/Stevens/Illot) became the world champion of private teams, ahead of AF Corse’s Ferrari No. 83.

Only two cars are authorized to score points for the World Constructors’ Championship. If a third car is entered, it will be registered for the Hypercar Teams World Cup.