Sebastien Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley have won the 6 Hours of Imola for the Toyota, the FIA World Endurance Championship’s 2026 season opener, after a titanic, race-long battle with Ferrari.
Second, 12 seconds behind the #8 Toyota, piloted by Buemi to the flag, was the #51 Ferrari of Antonio Giovinazzi, Alessandro Pier Guidi, and James Calado. The #7 Toyota, of Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway, finished third.
The #51 Ferrari, with Calado at the wheel for the first stint, started on pole with Hartley in the #8 Toyota alongside. However, the Kiwi almost immediately lost the position to Miguel Molina in the #50 Ferrari, who had started third, giving the Italian manufacturer a 1-2 on the first lap. All the better that this is their home race in front of the adoring Tifosi, who made up a significant portion of the record 92,000 plus weekend crowd!
The two Ferraris began to pull away from Hartley but the Toyota had pace and was able to keep the gap small.
The first caution period, though, buried any crowd hopes of Ferrari dominance. LMGT3 driver Petru Umbraescu had beached his ASP Lexjus in one of Imola’s many gravel traps. He was craned out but later retired, unable to return to the pits.
Back on track and Hartley had jumped Molina in the pitstops. When the race returned to green flag racing, then, Hartley was just metres from Calado’s rear wing in the lead. The Briton, though, was able to retain the lead, but Hartley staying close behind.
Molina had started on old softs and, like most other Hypercars, had not changed tyres. This meant the grip was wearing thinner and thinner on the Ferrari, and it cost the Spaniard third as Will Stevens, in the #12 Cadillac, passed him and immediately began building a gap.
However, Nick Cassidy, in the #94 Peugeot, soon triggered the race’s second and final caution period, just over 2 hours into the race. The Kiwi, making his full-season debut in WEC this year, spun his Peugeot 9X8 exiting the pits on cold tyres over the curbs, beaching the car in the gravel at Tamburello on drivers’ left.
In the ensuing ‘cheap’ pit stops, the leaders pitted with Hirakawa replacing Hartley at the wheel of the #8 Toyota, with Pier Guidi also replacing Calado in the #51 Ferrari. Hirakawa subsequently jumped Pier Guidi out of the pits, giving the Japanese driver the theoretical lead behind the safety car.
However, in the lead on track was Stevens in the #12 Cadillac, who hadn’t pitted. However, he also had a drive through penalty for a yellow flag infringement, meaning he’d have to pit once the race went green.
This he duly did on the first flying lap after the restart, handing Hirakawa the on-track lead with Pier Guidi second. Third was Antonio Felix da Costa, returning to WEC after a few years away, in the #35 Alpine, with the #50 Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen fourth.
The second half of the race, then, saw the battle between the #51 Ferrari and the #8 Toyota magnified. Both were the class of the field and had a clear pace advantage, and yet they couldn’t beat each other.
Imola is a narrow, classic circuit built in the early 1950s, and its characteristics make overtaking hard. Try as he might, Pier Guidi, just a second or so off Hirakawa, could not find a way through.
After 2 hours in the car, the Italian handed the scarlet Ferrari over to countryman Antonio Giovinazzi, with Pier Guidi now familiar with every intricacy of the Toyota’s new-look rear wing. A few laps later Hirakawa also pitted, giving the car to Sebastien Buemi, with both cars getting new soft tyres as the end of the race neared.
However, the #7 Toyota, which now had Kobayashi at the wheel, had been stalking the #51 Ferrari for a while. With fast pit work, Toyota pounced and jumped them in the pits, handing the Japanese manufacturer a 1-2 for the first time in the race.
Kobayashi, while not quite possessing the pace of Buemi in the sister car, held back Giovinazzi for the stint. At the final round of stops, when the Italian pitted for the last time, he only took fuel, while Kobayashi had new soft tyres fitted to his Toyota. This extra time in the pits meant he dropped to third, elevating Giovinazzi to second and meaning he had the opportunity to chase down Buemi, who also only took fuel at his last stop.
Buemi was fuel saving to the finish, and although Giovinazzi closed the gap by a few seconds, he wasn’t able to make more progress as his 60-odd lap softs wore more and more.
And so Buemi crossed the line to win the opening race of the season, 13.352 ahead of Giovinazzi. Kobayashi came home third, a further 27 seconds adrift despite the new tyres. Fourth was Charles Milesi in the #35 Alpine, with fifth going to Rene Rast in the #20 BMW, while the #50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco crossed the line sixth, just tenths away from Rast.
LMGT3 was won the WRT BMW team, with Anthony McIntosh, Dan Harper and Parker Thompson victorious behind the wheel of the #69 WRT BMW.
The #10 Garage 59 McLaren of Antares Au, Marvin Kirchhoffer and Tom Fleming started on pole, with Au at the wheel, and was at or near the front for the majority of the 6 hour race.
It quickly emerged that the battle for the win would be between the Garage 59 McLaren and the WRT BMW, but in the final hour there was heartbreak for the WEC debut team, as the car stopped on track with Kirchhoffer behind the wheel, just metres after the pit entry on the main straight.
Kirchoffer had to do an entire lap at slow speeds as rival cars whizzed passed him, including the BMW of Harper, with the German-made, Belgian-run car taking the lead in the process. It later emerged that the McLaren’s problems were an electrical issue, painfully knocking them out of contention for a win on their WEC debut.
So, the #69 BMW of McIntosh, Thompson and Harper took victory, ahead of the #33 TF Sport Corvette of Blake McDonald, Nicky Catsburg, and Jonny Edgar. At the line, Edgar was just a few tenths off Harper, in a tight finish even without the McLaren. Third was Richard Lietz, Yasser Shahin and Riccardo Perra in the #92 Manthey Porsche, 45 seconds off the leading BMW.
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