The Lexus RC F will make its final FIA World Endurance Championship start this weekend (6-8 November), and it will do so from pole position, following a stellar performance by Hadrien David and Akkodis ASP Team on a damp-but-drying track surface today at Monza.
The Lexus has been a front-running contender in FIA WEC’s LMGT3 category over the past two seasons, with David previously securing the top spot on the class starting grid at Spa-Francorchamps earlier this year. The rising French star gave another demonstration of his palpable potential by mastering the mixed conditions to secure a second career pole – the fourth for the Japanese marque.
In company with #78 team-mates Tom Van Rompuy and Esteban Masson, he will now be eager to translate that into the top step on the podium, with Akkodis’ race day efforts having repeatedly been hampered by ill-fortune in 2026 – the runner-up spoils in the 24 Hours of Le Mans the squad’s solitary silverware to-date.
“I’m very happy,” enthused 22-year-old David. “We’ve struggled a lot over the past few races, so this is a good day for the team. We were expecting to be fast because we know the Lexus is strong in these conditions, when it’s very cold and we have big straights – and it felt great!
“Having not had any session before that in the dry, it wasn’t easy to set the car up, but the team did a great job and I need to give them a lot of credit because I couldn’t do this without them. We know our weak point tomorrow will be tyre wear, but fortunately, this track is usually quite low in terms of degradation so hopefully we can finish the season on a high.”
Pole looked to have gone the way of Heart of Racing Team’s Eduardo Barrichello – a driver with an unrivalled Hyperpole record in LMGT3 over the last two years – with the Brazilian Aston Martin driver stopping the clocks almost half-a-second quicker than anybody else, only to immediately lose the lap due to a track limits transgression.
That elevated championship leader Jonny Edgar to the front row of the grid, as the #33 TF Sport Corvette star bids to become FIA WEC’s first solo champion in more than a decade. The Briton ended up a mere 0.014s shy of David – the second-narrowest gap in the history of the production-based division.
Ben Tuck put the best-placed Proton Competition Ford Mustang third on the grid – four spots ahead of home hero Giammarco Levorato in the sister car – with Barrichello ultimately classified fourth. The second Lexus and Aston Martin entries completed the top six, with the #34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette and #92 The Bend Manthey Porsche – the only two cars that can still deny the #33 Corvette the crown – respectively 10th and 11th.
The #69 Team WRT BMW – the sole other competitor capable of challenging for championship honours coming into the weekend – exited the title chase after qualifying just 16th.
The 6 Hours of Monza will begin at 11:00 local time (CET) tomorrow (Sunday, 8 November).
Check out the full qualifying and Hyperpole times.
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