The 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship season has been a challenging one for BMW M Team WRT, in their first season of running a pair of BMW M Hybrid V8 cars in the Hypercar class, as well as a pair of M4 GT3s in the LMGT3 class. The team had momentum after their first podium finish at Fuji Speedway in Japan in mid-September and hoped to ride that wave into the finale at Bahrain but came away with a best finish of fifth.
The pair of M Hybrid V8s were fast in practice for the 8 Hours of Bahrain, with Dries Vanthoor setting the fastest time in one of the sessions. Both cars also managed to get into the Hyperpole qualifying session that features the top ten fastest cars, but they qualified ninth (#15) and tenth (#20) in Hyperpole. The fastest BMW was the #15 with a 1:47.97, but that was over 1.2 seconds off the pole time of the #8 Toyota. In the LMGT3 class, neither of the M4 GT3s made it into the Hyperpole shootout, as they qualified in twelfth (#31) and thirteenth (#46).
The M Hybrid V8s both started to perform better in the race than they had in qualifying. The #20 car of René Rast, Robin Frijns, and Sheldon van der Linde moved up into fifth position after starting in tenth but had to retire with an engine issue. Dries Vanthoor moved up into third with two hours left in the race in the #15 car that he shared with Marco Wittmann and Rafaelle Marciello, but then fell back in the final two hours as the race was interrupted by full course yellows and safety car phases. The #20 finished in sixth initially but was moved into fifth after the #51 Ferrari was penalized for exceeding their tire allocation. The #8 Toyota ultimately won the race.
In LMGT3, the #31 M4 GT3 entry of Augusto Farfus, Darren Leung, and Sean Gelael were fighting for third in the championship, but didn’t have the pace to compete at Bahrain and finished thirteenth, with the #46 car of Maxime Martin, Valentino Rossi and Ahmad Al Harty in fourteenth. The LMGT3 was won by the #55 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3. “When you have no pace, it makes a race very difficult,” said Augusto Farfus after the race. “We did our best, our crew did a perfect job. To still lose P3 in the championship, is sad. Looking back at the season, we can be very proud. It was the first time in this championship for many of us and we won a race and finished second in Le Mans.”
Toyota won the manufacturers’ championship in the final Hypercar standings, while Porsche drivers Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, and Andre Lotterer won the drivers’ championship. BMW was fifth in the manufacturer’s championship behind Toyota, Porsche, Ferrari, and Alpine. Marco Wittmann, Rafaelle Marciello, and Dries Vanthoor finished 14th in the drivers’ championship and Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns, and René Rast finished in 27th. “This result is not what we had hoped for, but overall, we can look back positively on the season, considering where we started in our first FIA WEC appearance in Qatar and where we are now in this fiercely contested world championship,” said Head of BMW M Motorsport Andreas Roos. “We’ll take this into the winter break and work hard to come back stronger next year.”
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy BMW]
