It was a fantastic Saturday for the Prancing Horse in Sakhir, at the Bahrain Six Hours, the eighth and final round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Gimmi Bruni, AF Corse and Ferrari took all three titles in the GTE Pro category at the end of a race they dominated pretty much from start to finish. Bruni, once again back with Finland’s Toni Vilander, as a plan to maximise the team’s chances of success, triumphed in the race, fighting off the ever present threat from Porsche, who arrived in Bahrain with a very well developed and competitive car: the 43 second lead over the Bergmeister-Pilet car at the flag is proof of what a great day it was for the 458 GT2. There was also a great third place for the former Formula 1 crew of Giancarlo Fisichella, who played a key role in Bruni’s successes earlier in the year and Kamui Kobayashi, who scored very important points towards the constructors’ and teams’ titles. There were two Maranello cars on the podium, just as there were retirements for the two Aston Martins entered, both stopped with reliability problems, which helped in getting ahead of them in all three classifications.

A great day for the 458 GT2 was completed by 8 Star Motorsport taking the team title in the GTE AM category, thanks to a second place for Vincenzo Potolicchio, Rui Aguas and Davide Rigon. Potolicchio and Aguas came so close to taking the drivers’ crown, beaten by a single point by Campbell-Walter and Hall in the Aston Martin. The Sakhir race in this category was won by the other Aston Martin, with the all-Danish crew of Thiim-Nygaard-Poulsen, while on the third step of the podium was the AF Corse crew of Collard-Perrodo-Griffin at the wheel of another 458 GT2.

“This is an amazing result,” commented Antonello Coletta, Head of Ferrari’s Corse Clienti department, who was in Sakhir to support the Prancing Horse teams for this title-decider weekend. “Reliability, work in the pits, car and race preparation, the drivers’ performance and their great ability to work together have been the keys to this success, which confirms that Ferrari is at the top of GT racing on a global scale for a second year running. It was a very difficult season, in which there were times when it looked as though we had little chance of winning. We never gave up, always believing we could do it. Now we can enjoy this victory and, as from Monday, we will turn our attention to next year, aware that, in this category, the competition is very strong and we are ever more determined to stay ahead of it.”