Bahrain WEC: Points-leading Porsche remains on top

The car needs a top-five finish to clinch the title this weekend, and has now topped both sessions so far in the Middle Eastern island kingdom.

Lieb set the early pace at 1m40.321s, ahead of Lucas di Grassi’s #8 Audi on 1m40.400s. Jani then jumped aboard the #2 and improved the fastest time to 1m39.817s, with Brendon Hartley making it a Porsche 1-2 in the #1 car with a time of 1m40.272s.

There was some bad news for #1, however, as it’s under investigation by stewards for not slowing down under a double-waved yellow flag.

The #8 Audi stayed third, two tenths ahead of the leading Toyota – the only car that can beat the #2 Porsche to the world title – of Mike Conway, Stephane Sarrazin and Kamui Kobayashi. Conway set the time of 1m40.603, well clear of Andre Lotterer’s 1m41.020s in the fifth-placed #7 Audi and the #5 Toyota, which managed 1m42.859s in Sebastian Buemi’s hands.

G-Drive led the LMP2 times throughout with Rene Rast and Alex Brundle setting consistently impressive times, a 1m50.056s being their quickest.

Aston holds sway in GT classes

There was a 1-2 in GTE-Pro again for Aston Martin, with Marco Sorensen setting the fastest time of 1m57.226s in the points-leading #95, ahead of the #97 sister car's 1m57.594s in the hands of Darren Turner and Jonathan Adam.

The #67 Ford of Harry Tincknell and Andy Priaulx was best of the rest on 1m59.168s, ahead of the Ferraris of Sam Bird/Davide Rigon and Gianmaria Bruni/James Calado.

The GTE-Am class was also topped by Aston Martin, with the sole Vantage of Pedro Lamy, Mathias Lauda and Paul dalla Lana actually setting the sixth-fastest GT lap of the session overall.

There was a brief full-course yellow after half an hour to remove some debris at Turn 13, but the session ran incident free apart from track limits warnings, which were activated for this session unlike in FP1.

WEC 2016 Bahrain FP2 results

Cla	Drivers	Car	Time	Gap
1	Romain Dumas    Neel Jani    Marc Lieb	Porsche 919 Hybrid	1'39.817
2	Mark Webber    Timo Bernhard    Brendon Hartley	Porsche 919 Hybrid	1'40.272	0.455
3	Lucas di Grassi    Loic Duval    Oliver Jarvis	Audi R18	1'40.400	0.583
4	Stéphane Sarrazin    Kamui Kobayashi    Mike Conway	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	1'40.603	0.786
5	Andre Lotterer    Marcel Fassler    Benoit Tréluyer	Audi R18	1'41.020	1.203
6	Anthony Davidson    Kazuki Nakajima    Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	1'42.859	3.042
7	Alexandre Imperatori    Dominik Kraihamer    Matheo Tuscher	Rebellion R-One	1'47.178	7.361
8	Simon Trummer    Oliver Webb    Pierre Kaffer	CLM P1/01	1'47.572	7.755
9	Roman Rusinov    René Rast    Alex Brundle	Oreca 05	1'50.056	10.239
10	Nicolas Lapierre    Gustavo Menezes    Stéphane Richelmi	Alpine A460	1'50.444	10.627
11	Richard Bradley    Matthew Rao    Alex Lynn	Oreca 05	1'51.023	11.206
12	Bruno Senna    Ricardo Gonzalez    Filipe Albuquerque	Ligier JS P2	1'51.297	11.480
13	Giedo van der Garde    Tom Dillmann    Sean Gelael	Ligier JS P2	1'51.419	11.602
14	Pipo Derani    Ryan Dalziel    Chris Cumming	Ligier JS P2	1'51.513	11.696
15	Roberto Merhi    Julien Canal    Roberto Gonzalez	Oreca 05	1'51.829	12.012
16	Maurizio Mediani    Nicolas Minassian    Mikhail Aleshin	BR01	1'52.359	12.542
17	Paul-Loup Chatin    Ho-Pin Tung    David Cheng	Alpine A460	1'52.537	12.720
18	Vitaly Petrov    Viktor Shaytar    Kirill Ladygin	BR01	1'52.910	13.093
19	Marco Sorensen    Nicki Thiim	Aston Martin Vantage V8	1'57.226	17.409
20	Darren Turner    Jonathan Adam	Aston Martin Vantage V8	1'57.233	17.416
21	Harry Tincknell    Andy Priaulx	Ford GT	1'59.168	19.351
22	Sam Bird    Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE	1'59.231	19.414
23	Gianmaria Bruni    James Calado	Ferrari 488 GTE	1'59.315	19.498
24	Pedro Lamy    Paul Dalla Lana    Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage V8	1'59.460	19.643
25	Stefan Mücke    Olivier Pla	Ford GT	1'59.658	19.841
26	Richard Lietz    Michael Christensen	Porsche 911 RSR (2016)	1'59.758	19.941
27	Pierre Ragues    Ricky Taylor    Romain Brandela	Chevrolet Corvette C7-Z06	2'00.579	20.762
28	François Perrodo    Emmanuel Collard    Rui Aguas	Ferrari F458 Italia	2'01.918	22.101
29	David Heinemeier Hansson   Patrick Long    Khaled Al Qubaisi	Porsche 911 RSR	2'01.959	22.142
30	Michael Wainwright    Adam Carroll    Ben Barker	Porsche 911 RSR	2'02.261	22.444
31	Christian Ried    Wolf Henzler    Joel Camathias	Porsche 911 RSR	2'02.350	22.533