BMW prevailed in a tense three-way tussle for glory in today’s Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo (12 July), with the Bavarian marque’s second success of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship campaign setting up a thrilling fight for Hypercar honours over the remaining four rounds.
Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA locked out the front row of the grid in Saturday’s Hyperpole session, but Kevin Magnussen swiftly split the two V-Series.Rs behind the wheel of the #15 BMW M Team WRT entry when the race got going in front of packed grandstands and almost 85,000 fans. After forcing his way past Earl Bamber for second at the famous Ferradura corner on lap 11, the Dane went on to hunt down Will Stevens ahead.
With the #12 Cadillac encountering a wheel nut delay in its first pit-stop, the M Hybrid V8 assumed a net lead that it would not subsequently relinquish. That was thanks to feisty performances from Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello, and a composed final couple of stints by an under-the-weather Dries Vanthoor.
In the closing stages of the six-hour bout, the Belgian found himself under threat from both the #51 Ferrari and recovering #12 Cadillac, but held his nerve to take the chequered flag in front of defending world champion James Calado, with Stevens not far behind in third. The result represented the first time the Brazilian round on the calendar has ever been won from beyond the front row of the grid.
“This has been a long time coming,” reflected Magnussen, a former pole-sitter at Interlagos during his Formula 1 career. “I’m just so happy to finally get the victory. I think we had the quickest car today, and it was an absolute pleasure to drive. Everything was on-point, from the strategy to the pit-stops and my two team-mates did an amazing job.”
Evidencing the ultra-tight nature of the Hypercar battle, less than seven seconds blanketed the top three at the end of a race that was only briefly interrupted by a short Full Course Yellow period in the second hour and in which all 35 starters reached the finish line, notwithstanding the late onset of light rain.
Calado together with team-mates Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi climbed stealthily up the order to scoop the runner-up spoils – equalling the best result so far this season for the defending world champions – while Cadillac ended a 12-month podium drought at the scene of its breakthrough FIA WEC victory last year.
Having dominated proceedings 24 hours earlier, neither of the two American prototypes enjoyed a trouble-free race day, with the #12’s slow pit-stop compounded by contact with Clemens Schmid in the #87 LMGT3 Lexus and Phil Hanson in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari. The sister #38 V-Series.R similarly lost time during its first trip to the pits, as both Cadillacs fell outside of the top ten, from where they gamely fought back to wind up third and fourth.
Fifth at the flag was the #83 Ferrari of Hanson, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye, followed by the #20 BMW of René Rast, Sheldon van der Linde and Robin Frijns, but a post-race penalty for the Dutchman due to a clash with Antonio Fuoco’s Ferrari relegated the trio to eighth. Rast and Frijns nonetheless returned to the summit of the championship standings, tied on points with 24 Hours of Le Mans winners Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries.
It was a torrid weekend for the two TOYOTA RACING TR010 Hybrids around the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, as the Japanese cars struggled for speed throughout. The La Sarthe-conquering #7 ended up a distant 12th, while the #8 piloted by Sébastien Buemi, Ryō Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley lost more than ten laps in the pits following contact with the #17 Genesis.
Arguably the most disappointed manufacturer, however, was Alpine. Ferdinand Habsburg, Charles Milesi and particularly António Félix da Costa all enjoyed solid stints in the lead as Les Bleus rolled the dice on strategy, but their gamble ultimately failed to pay off, leaving the #35 crew to scrape a single point for tenth place.
The chase for the world championship crown will continue after the series’ annual summer break, when the action resumes at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas in Texas, USA on 4-6 September.
Check out the full race results.
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