Successful dual programme concludes in Bahrain

Proton Competition closed out a successful 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship season with two top 10 finishes in the 8 Hours of Bahrain on 8 November. As one of only a few teams to field cars in both the Hypercar and LMGT3 classes, the team from southern Germany embraced the formidable challenge, achieving numerous highlights and milestones throughout the year.

In the second year of the Ford Mustang LMGT3 programme, the team savoured a series achievements. A standout was the qualifying form of Stefano Gattuso, Giammarco Levorato and Dennis Olsen, with the #88 crew reaching the Hyperpole shoot-out in seven of the eight races – culminating with a pole position at Ford’s home race at the Circuit of the Americas. The trio also savoured the podium champagne, securing a second-place class finish at the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in May.

For the #77 crew of Ben Barker, Ben Tuck and Bernardo Sousa, 2025 was a year of establishing rhythm with a new driver line-up. The trio demonstrated both skill and perseverance, recording a season-best fourth-place finish at Spa-Francorchamps.

At the season finale in Bahrain, the Ford Mustang LMGT3s battled hard but were unable to break into the leading positions. Nonetheless, a double-points finish – with the #77 car in eighth and the #88 in tenth – allowed the team to close the season with valuable championship points.

“There were highlights throughout the weekend and the Mustang LMGT3 showed a lot of speed here at Bahrain,” said Ben Barker. “We had some solid finishes throughout the year. We had the potential for wins – COTA for example. The team did a very good job, and Ben and Bernardo had some really clean stints.”

The highlight of the Hypercar programme with the #99 Porsche 963 came at the 6 Hours of Fuji, where Neel Jani, Nicolas Pino and Nicolás Varrone led for a significant portion of the race. The privately entered Porsche also managed to finish in the top 10 ahead of fully works outfits in 2025. However, at the season finale in Bahrain luck wasn’t on the team’s side and the car came home in 17th position.

“It was a difficult last race for us,” said Neel Jani. “We had a technical issue that cost us quite a lot of power over the course of the race. That made it really difficult for us. Thanks to the team and all of the mechanics for all their hard work this season. It would have been great to finish on a high, but it just wasn’t to be.”

The 8 Hours of Bahrain marked the end of Proton Competition’s 13th season of FIA World Endurance Championship competition, continuing its record of competing in every one of the series’ 101 races to date.

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Copyright: Proton Competition (Paola Depalmas) & Porsche