Al Harthy to start on 7th row at Bahrain FIA WEC final

Muscat: Omani racing driver Ahmad al Harthy will begin today’s Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain – the final race of the FIA World Endurance Championship season – from the seventh row of the LMGT3 grid, after qualifying 13th fastest during the grid-determining session on Friday. Placing the lion’s share of focus on race set-up and race performance during the trio of practice sessions at Bahrain International Circuit, Team WRT driver Al Harthy was fairly satisfied with the qualifying run as a result – especially with the Sakhir track being one of the least favourable for his BMW M4. Al Harthy and team-mates Valentino Rossi and Maxime Martin ended the opening practice on Thursday, October 31, a creditable eighth quickest in LMGT3 and the trio went on to finish session two later in the day a consistent ninth on the timing screens. After the third and final practice on Friday morning, Bronze graded driver Al Harthy took qualifying duty in the No.46 BMW M4 – as usual – and he hovered around the top eight during the opening minutes of the session, having been as high as second at one point. Slipping outside the top 10 later on, and therefore missing out on the cut-off for the Hyperpole shoot-out session, the Omani ultimately had to settle for 13th on the timesheets with a best lap of 2m03.797 seconds, less than 0.2 seconds shy of 10th place. Going into today’s eight-hour race, the OQ, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, Omantel, Experience Oman and BMW Oman supported racer is eying a big finish to his first year with Team WRT and BMW and determined to try and challenge for more silverware. Off the back of a magnificent performance in Fuji, Japan, in September where the team-mates achieved a superb third position, Al Harthy hopes for another major points haul as the squad looks to consolidate fifth in the LMGT3 driver standings. Ahmad al Harthy: “It was the best we could do, P13, and we usually race better than we qualify. We’ve worked a lot more for the race set-up so we’re all feeling positive for the race. I would say Bahrain is one of the toughest tracks for us this season in WEC, we have an eight-hour race ahead and the weather is likely to change a lot during the eight hours, so we’re looking forward to it. We will keep pushing and hope for a good conclusion to the FIA WEC season.”