Ferrari ended its longest winless run in WEC history at Lone Star Le Mans, with the #50 Ferrari 499P of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen inheriting victory after the #7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid suffered a late hydraulic failure while leading. It capped an eventful six hours at COTA that delivered on almost every storyline flagged coming into the weekend.
Hypercar
Antonio Giovinazzi’s #51 Ferrari took pole after a dead heat in Hyperpole with Jack Aitken’s #38 Cadillac, and the pair duelled for the lead through an opening hour disrupted by GT3 traffic and two early caution periods. Different strategies soon separated the field, with the #50 Ferrari and #7 Toyota both electing to short-fuel their way to the front. The #51’s title challenge unravelled from there: a stalled restart for Giovinazzi at the start of the third hour cost around 30 seconds, and the team never recovered on a day it had gone into expecting to fight for the win.
Image courtesy of FIA WEC
The #7 Toyota, shared by Nyck de Vries, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, grew into the race, rising from fourth at the first caution to take the lead from Earl Bamber’s Cadillac at Turn 1 with a little over two hours remaining. De Vries was still at the wheel for the run to the flag, pulling out a healthy gap after the second neutralisation reset the field with 46 minutes to go. A hydraulic problem then intervened with barely ten minutes left, costing Toyota power steering and forcing the car into retirement while running six seconds clear. “It was a very sad end to a great day,” De Vries reflected afterwards.
Nielsen had already worked his way up to second with a pass on Charles Milesi’s #35 Alpine in traffic, and inherited the lead once the Toyota dropped out, handing the #50 crew Ferrari’s first win since last year’s Le Mans and their own first visit to the top step since Qatar’s season opener. Aitken, Sébastien Bourdais and Bamber completed the #38 Cadillac’s run to second on home soil, continuing the marque’s recent COTA form, just ahead of Milesi’s Alpine, which slipped from second to third after a five-second penalty for an unsafe pit release but still marked the French manufacturer’s first podium of its farewell WEC season. Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble’s #007 Aston Martin Valkyrie took fourth, matching the marque’s best result in the class, with Victor Martins recovering the #36 Alpine to fifth. The #8 Toyota, #17 Genesis, #15 BMW, #12 Cadillac and #94 Peugeot rounded out the top ten, while Giovinazzi and Calado’s #51 Ferrari salvaged 11th and the second BMW just 12th. Despite the misfortune, Kobayashi, Conway and De Vries retain the Drivers’ championship lead on countback from Robin Frijns and René Rast, while Ferrari’s win has turned the Manufacturers’ fight into a three-way contest.
LMGT3
Aston Martin’s front row lockout in qualifying gave way to an early scrap led by the Proton Ford Mustangs, before a drive-through penalty for the #77 car and race-ending contact for its #88 sister car put paid to that challenge. James Cottingham’s #91 Manthey Porsche led for a spell but a penalty for gaining an advantage handed the initiative back to Heart of Racing’s #27 Aston Martin Vantage. Mattia Drudi held that lead through the closing two hours, despite losing air conditioning in the Texas heat, to secure the position with Ian James and Zacharie Robichon. It was the team’s first class win in two years, and its second at COTA following the marque’s maiden victory here from pole two years ago — the drought the form book had suggested was due to end.
Image courtesy of FIA WEC
Cottingham, Ayhancan Guven and Timur Boguslavskiy brought the #91 Porsche home second, five seconds back, with Aston Martin completing the podium through Gray Newell, Eduardo Barrichello and Jonny Adam in the #23 car. The #21 AF Corse Ferrari of Francois Heriau, Simon Mann and Alessio Rovera took fourth, moving the team up to second in the Teams’ standings, with the recovering #77 Proton Mustang fifth.
It was a difficult day for the class’s championship contenders. Points leader Ben Keating’s #33 Corvette was turned around at Turn 1 and never recovered, hampered further by success ballast on its way to 12th, while the WRT BMW lost a lap to a puncture and Racing Team Turkey’s Corvette — winner in Brazil — retired with a steering problem, as did the sister Manthey Porsche after Riccardo Perra clipped a kerb.
The season continues in three weeks with round 6 at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan: the 25th to the 27th of September.
