The 6 Hours of Imola ended with the Toyota TR010 Hybrid number 8 leading the Hypercar field and with the first points of the 2026 WEC championship for Toyota Racing, which also scored the 100th race in its history in the series. Brendon Hartley started the race, Ryo Hirakawa covered most of the middle stints, and Sébastien Buemi took the checkered flag. Ferrari AF Corse finished second with the number 51 of Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi, and the Toyota number 7 with Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Nyck de Vries finished third.

Giovinazzi had taken pole by eleven thousandths over the TR010 number 8 on Saturday, with the Ferrari number 50 third, forty thousandths behind, and the top four places split among Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot, and Cadillac within a three-tenths interval, a compression that suggested the race would be decided in the pits and tire management rather than each car's pure speed.

Photo By Maxime Lantz

Toyota opted to keep Hartley on track during the first two hours on the original Michelin tires, a longer stint than conventional that allowed him to get to the front in the first pit sequence without needing to pass anyone on track. Hirakawa managed the advantage over Pier Guidi in the fourth hour with the two cars within seconds and Ferrari unable to force an error; Pier Guidi brought forward his stop in an undercut attempt but lost a few seconds entering the pits, and when Hirakawa refueled, he exited ahead with a thirteen-second gap that never closed again.

The TR010 Hybrid arrived at Imola with a revised package for 2026 that included evolutions in efficiency and overall performance, and in free practice the team did not chase lap times, letting Alpine set the fastest time with Milesi in FP2 and Ferrari reclaim the reference with Fuoco in FP3, with the program focused on understanding the car's behavior in race conditions. The Ferrari 499P, on the other hand, is a mature platform since 2025 that the Maranello team prepared with setup adjustments and specific execution for Imola, without significant aerodynamic updates.

Photo By Maxime Lantz

Alpine finished fourth with the number 35 of Félix da Costa, Milesi, and Habsburg, ahead of the two BMW M Hybrid V8s, with the number 20 of Frijns and Rast in fifth and the number 15 of Magnussen and Marciello in seventh. The Cadillac number 38 of Bamber and Bourdais finished eighth and the Aston Martin number 007 of Tincknell and Gamble ninth, in a second half of the Hypercar field where the Ferrari number 50 and the Cadillac number 12 lost positions due to Virtual Safety Car penalties in the middle portion of the race. Genesis Magma Racing closed its first WEC race with the number 17 of Lotterer, Derani, and Jaubert in fifteenth and with championship points from the opener. The number 19 of Jaminet, Chatin, and Juncadella lost more than twenty laps due to a technical issue in the first hour that forced the team to fix the failure in the pits, and although the car finished the race, the accumulated gap left it out of any points fight. For a program running its first race in the series, finishing both cars and scoring points with one of them is already a functional result.

Photo By Maxime Lantz

Team WRT BMW wins LMGT3 as the leading McLaren drops out of the fight

The McLaren number 10 of Garage 59 had started from pole with Antares Au and maintained the pace at the front of the GT3 class for most of the race, until it suffered issues in the final hour and lost a position it never regained. The BMW number 69 of Team WRT, with Anthony McIntosh, Parker Thompson, and Daniel Harper, moved to the front at that moment and held the position to the flag. The Corvette number 33 of TF Sport, with Jonny Edgar, Blake McDonald, and Nicky Catsburg, finished second, and the Porsche number 92 of The Bend Manthey with Yasser Shahin, Richard Lietz, and Riccardo Pera finished third in class after a spin in the early stages that had taken them out of the fight at the start.

Photo By Maxime Lantz

One of the Akkodis ASP RC Fs got stuck in gearbox trouble in the second hour and was pushed back to the garage; the other stopped on track with an unsolvable failure, and both retirements left the teams that had a clean start fighting for positions that would not otherwise have been available.

Toyota opens the championship at the front, Ferrari second

Toyota closes the season opener with maximum points in Hypercar and Ferrari second in the provisional championship, and the next response will come at Spa-Francorchamps, where the WEC returns from May 7th to 9th.

Photo By Maxime Lantz

Pos	Pos. cl.	#	team	car	drivers	Cat.	Gap	laps
1	1	#8	Toyota Racing	Toyota TR010 Hybrid	Sébastien Buemi Brendon Hartley Ryo Hirakawa	HYPERCAR	—	213
2	2	#51	Ferrari AF Corse	Ferrari 499P	Alessandro Pier Guidi James Calado Antonio Giovinazzi	HYPERCAR	+13.352	213
3	3	#7	Toyota Racing	Toyota TR010 Hybrid	Mike Conway Kamui Kobayashi Nyck De Vries	HYPERCAR	+41.187	213
4	4	#35	Alpine Endurance Team	Alpine A424	António Félix Da Costa Ferdinand Habsburg Charles Milesi	HYPERCAR	+59.385	213
5	5	#20	BMW M Team WRT	BMW M Hybrid V8	Robin Frijns René Rast	HYPERCAR	+60.543	213
6	6	#50	Ferrari AF Corse	Ferrari 499P	Antonio Fuoco Miguel Molina Nicklas Nielsen	HYPERCAR	+60.901	213
7	7	#15	BMW M Team WRT	BMW M Hybrid V8	Kevin Magnussen Raffaele Marciello	HYPERCAR	+61.506	213
8	8	#38	Cadillac Hertz Team Jota	Cadillac V-Series.R	Earl Bamber Sébastien Bourdais	HYPERCAR	+61.995	213
9	9	#007	Aston Martin Thor Team	Aston Martin Valkyrie	Harry Tincknell Tom Gamble	HYPERCAR	+5.447	212
10	10	#83	AF Corse	Ferrari 499P	Robert Kubica Yifei Ye Philip Hanson	HYPERCAR	+5.885	212
11	11	#36	Alpine Endurance Team	Alpine A424	Jules Gounon Frédéric Makowiecki Victor Martins	HYPERCAR	+32.595	212
12	12	#94	Peugeot Totalenergies	Peugeot 9X8	Loïc Duval Malthe Jakobsen Théo Pourchaire	HYPERCAR	+75.429	212
13	13	#12	Cadillac Hertz Team Jota	Cadillac V-Series.R	Norman Nato Will Stevens	HYPERCAR	+75.707	212
14	14	#009	Aston Martin Thor Team	Aston Martin Valkyrie	Alex Riberas Marco Sørensen	HYPERCAR	+76.698	212
15	15	#17	Genesis Magma Racing	Genesis GMR-001-Hypercar	Luis Felipe Derani Mathys Jaubert André Lotterer	HYPERCAR	+4.929	211
16	16	#93	Peugeot Totalenergies	Peugeot 9X8	Nick Cassidy Paul Di Resta Stoffel Vandoorne	HYPERCAR	+81.032	210
17	1	#69	Team WRT	BMW M4 LMGT3 Evo	Anthony Mcintosh Parker Thompson Daniel Harper	LMGT3	+100.318	194
18	2	#33	TF Sport	Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R	Blake Mcdonald Jonny Edgar Nicky Catsburg	LMGT3	+100.583	194
19	3	#92	The Bend Manthey	Porsche 911 GT3 R LMGT3	Yasser Shahin Riccardo Pera Richard Lietz	LMGT3	+42.045	193
20	4	#91	Manthey DK Engineering	Porsche 911 GT3 R LMGT3	James Cottingham Timur Boguslavskiy Ayhancan Güven	LMGT3	+55.407	193
21	5	#32	Team WRT	BMW M4 LMGT3 Evo	Darren Leung Sean Gelael Augusto Farfus	LMGT3	+68.446	193
22	6	#21	Vista AF Corse	Ferrari 296 LMGT3 Evo	Simon Mann François Hériau Alessio Rovera	LMGT3	+85.526	193
23	7	#58	Garage 59	McLaren 720S LMGT3 Evo	Alexander West Finn Gehrsitz Benjamin Goethe	LMGT3	+86.782	193
24	8	#88	Proton Competition	Ford Mustang LMGT3	Stefano Gattuso Giammarco Levorato Logan Sargeant	LMGT3	+91.415	193
25	9	#23	Heart of Racing Team	Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGT3	Gray Newell Kobe Pauwels Jonny Adam	LMGT3	+92.692	193
26	10	#77	Proton Competition	Ford Mustang LMGT3	Ben Tuck Eric Powell Sebastian Priaulx	LMGT3	+92.742	193
27	11	#54	Vista AF Corse	Ferrari 296 LMGT3 Evo	Thomas Flohr Francesco Castellacci Davide Rigon	LMGT3	+35.074	192
28	12	#79	Iron Lynx	Mercedes-AMG LMGT3	Johannes Zelger Matteo Cressoni Lin Hodenius	LMGT3	+43.031	192
29	17	#19	Genesis Magma Racing	Genesis GMR-001-Hypercar	Paul-Loup Chatin Mathieu Jaminet Daniel Juncadella	HYPERCAR	+8.681	189
30	13	#10	Garage 59	McLaren 720S LMGT3 Evo	Antares Au Thomas Fleming Marvin Kirchhöfer	LMGT3	+93.611	179
31	14	#78	Akkodis ASP Team	Lexus RC F LMGT3	Tom Van Rompuy Hadrien David Esteban Masson	LMGT3	+92.976	171
32	15	#61	Iron Lynx	Mercedes-AMG LMGT3	Martin Berry Rui Andrade Maxime Martin	LMGT3	+56.853	166
33	16	#34	Racing Team Turkey by TF	Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R	Peter Dempsey Salih Yoluç Charlie Eastwood	LMGT3	+55.962	162
34	17	#27	Heart of Racing Team	Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGT3	Ian James Zacharie Robichon Mattia Drudi	LMGT3	+31.767	146
35	18	#87	Akkodis ASP Team	Lexus RC F LMGT3	Petru Umbrärescu Clemens Schmid José María López	LMGT3	+27.392	32