Defending world champions Ferrari returned to winning ways in today’s Lone Star Le Mans event at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas, as the #50 499P Hypercar benefitted from a late-race retirement for the #7 Toyota to blow the title fight wide open.
For the majority of the six-hour contest under the blistering Texan sun – and sporadic showers – it was the joint championship-leading Toyota TR010 Hybrid of Nyck de Vries, Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway that looked set to prevail, courtesy most notably of a show-stopping performance by the Dutchman.
It seemed the Japanese automotive giant was finally set to conquer COTA – one of only four circuits in FIA World Endurance Championship history at which it has never won – but fate had other ideas, and with barely ten minutes left on the clock and an advantage of six seconds over the pursuing Ferrari, de Vries was forced into retirement by a hydraulic pressure issue.
Like a number of its Hypercar rivals, the #50 scarlet machine – piloted by Miguel Molina, Antonio Fuoco and Nicklas Nielsen – adopted an offset strategy, with the Spaniard moving from fifth up to third in the opening stages and surviving a tag from André Lotterer’s Genesis prior to peeling into the pits for an early first stop at the 50-minute mark.
In front of almost 70,000 trackside fans, that tactical decision catapulted the car to the head of the order, and both Molina and subsequently Nielsen dug deep during their respective stints behind the wheel to keep the #8 Toyota at bay. In a race punctuated by two Safety Car periods and three Full Course Yellow interventions, Fuoco maintained the momentum in the middle phase prior to ceding the cockpit back to Nielsen for the final hour.
The Dane took advantage of a delay in traffic for Alpine Endurance Team’s Charles Milesi to climb from third to second, and then inherited the lead when de Vries ran into trouble. The #50 trio’s third consecutive podium finish at COTA – having taken the chequered flag third in 2024 and second in 2025 – ended Ferrari’s longest-ever barren streak in the series as the Prancing Horse celebrated its maiden success of the 2026 campaign.
“I’m really happy,” enthused Molina, who like team-mates Fuoco and Nielsen, had not stood atop the highest step of the FIA WEC rostrum since last year’s Qatar curtain-raising contest. “We’ve been working really hard behind-the-scenes to try to get back to this position and we did a really good race with no mistakes. In the end, it was our day, so big thanks to the team. Now, we need to take this momentum forward with us!”
Having started from the front row of the grid, the #38 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R of Jack Aitken, Sébastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber was a consistent contender on its way to scooping the runner-up spoils. The crew benefitted from a late penalty for the #35 Alpine due to an unsafe pit-stop release that dropped Milesi, António Félix da Costa and Ferdinand Habsburg to third – a result that nonetheless represented Les Bleus’ first podium appearance of the season.
Aston Martin’s Valkyrie Hypercar matched its finest result to-date in FIA WEC’s top-tier with a fourth-place finish in the hands of British duo Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble, ahead of the second Alpine, whose bid for glory was undone by the timing of the last neutralisation, prompting a stirring fightback by standout endurance racing rookie, Victor Martins.
Sébastien Buemi similarly unleashed a late charge to rise to sixth in the #8 Toyota, followed by the #17 Genesis – marking the South Korean newcomer’s best finish thus far, despite Lotterer’s early error – the #15 BMW, the #12 Cadillac and the #94 Peugeot.
In the context of the wider title battle, with neither the #7 Toyota nor #20 BMW scoring points, there remains nothing to separate de Vries, Kobayashi and Conway from René Rast and Robin Frijns at the summit of the Drivers’ world championship standings, while Ferrari’s victory has made it a three-way tussle at the top of the Manufacturers’ table.
The campaign will continue with round six of eight – the 6 Hours of Fuji in Japan – on 25-27 September.
Check out the full race results.
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