Barcelona Post-Race Notebook

***Last weekend’s 6 Hours of Barcelona marked the first time the FIA World Endurance Championship manufacturers’ crown has been locked up with a race to spare since 2023, when Toyota sealed the title with a victory on home soil at Fuji. It was the Cologne-based squad’s first 1-2 finish of the season — although the third time it had both cars on the podium after Imola and Le Mans — and its first since Bahrain last year.

***The win marked Toyota’s 53rd in 106 races, restoring its 50 percent win percentage, while the No. 8 crew of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa are the first back-to-back winners since the No. 51 Ferrari crew at Imola and Spa last year.

***In his 100th WEC race, Buemi notched up his 29th victory, while Hartley scored his 26th and Hirakawa his ninth, with the latter scoring back-to-back wins for the first time.

***Toyota Racing technical director David Floury once again praised Hirakawa for his closing stint as he pulled away from the sister No.  7 car driven first by Kamui Kobayashi and then by Nyck de Vries, with the Barcelona race following closely on from confirmation that the Japanese driver will not race in Formula 1 for Haas next season.

***Floury told reporters: “Ryo was very strong [at the end of the race], as we saw in qualifying, and as we saw in Fuji. I am very happy for him. It shows how strong he is as well because for him, Formula 1 would have been a strong opportunity, and to be able to bounce back and keep being that strong. It shows how good a driver he is.”

***While the fight for the manufacturers’ title is over, the battle for second remains on between BMW and Ferrari, with 24 points splitting the brands ahead of the Monza season finale next month. Cadillac also remains in mathematical contention for the runner-up spot, 36 points behind with 44 left on offer.

***Ferrari head of track operations Giuliano Salvi described the third-place result achieved by the No. 50 499P as “extremely solid” while also expressing satisfaction with the satellite No. 83 AF Corse car’s season-best finish of fifth. “Maybe we didn’t choose the right time to pit at the very end, but the maximum was P4 and at the very end we were P5,” said Salvi. “I think it was a good after a few not really competitive races to be back in the top-five.”

***On what he described as a “really important” final race at Monza for the team, Salvi added: “We will be there with the final race for the [current] 499P and the 50 showed our potential today. We are pretty convinced we will be competitive there. We are still fighting for second position in the championship, in front of our home crowd, so based on our experience with car 50 today, we need to replicate this with all three cars and go on maximum attack in front of our ‘tifosi’.”

***BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos lamented the end of the German brand’s drivers’ and manufacturers’ title hopes after the pair of WRT BMW M Hybrid V8s could only finish seventh and 14th at Barcelona. “When you want to fight for a world championship, you can’t have races like this,” said Roos.

***The team knew it did not have the pace to take the fight to Toyota, and therefore tried a strategy gamble on the No. 20 car by being the only crew in the field not to pit during the second Virtual Safety Car towards the end of the opening hour. But the gamble failed to pay off as tire pressures on the No. 20 machine got too low following the caution and it was forced to pit immediately, while also being given a 20-second sanction.

***WRT team boss Vincent Vosse believed the new Michelin wet-weather tires introduced for this race were a significant factor, despite BMW being one of only two manufacturers (along with Peugeot) to have previously tested the rubber, at Sebring. Vosse said: “We don’t have a lot of experience with the tires and we were too low. We made a mistake and we have to cope with it. When you take this pit stop, plus the drive-through, this is killing the race of Car 20.”

***Roos reckoned fourth was the maximum that could have been achieved with a clean race. The No. 15 machine was ultimately hampered by a 10-second penalty for contact with the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac V-Series.R, which went on to finish fourth.

***Despite the title disappointment, Roos added: “If you had asked us before the season, to be where we are now, I would’ve immediately ticked the box and signed it.”

***A slow puncture with ten minutes to go cost the No. 36 Signatech Alpine A424 a top-six finish. The team had tried an alternate strategy by pitting early for the penultimate time to split its final two stints into an equal length, but ended up losing vital time by exiting the pits just ahead of the lead Toyota and having to yield for blue flags.

***After pitting for the puncture, Victor Martins emerged ninth but passed Marco Sorensen’s Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie with two laps to go. “A top-five would’ve been a great result for the team but sometimes in motorsport you don’t have all the cards in your hands,” Martins’ co-driver Jules Gounon told Sportscar365. “We were stuck on new tires behind the Toyota before it pitted, so that ruined a bit the strategy.”

***Peugeot team principal Emmanuel Esnault was magnanimous about the French squad’s performance at Barcelona as its two 9X8s finished 12th and 13th, despite Paul di Resta enjoying a competitive first hour of the race aboard the No. 93 car in the wet. “It was as expected,” Esnault told Sportscar365. “I think we knew the rain would help us, and it was the case, but as soon as it dried out, we were back to the pace we experienced at the start of the weekend.”

***Esnault added that the biggest takeaway for the team was the performance of Hypercar rookie Alex Quinn, who took over the No. 93 machine for the closing portion of the race. “He did an incredible job for his very first race with us,” said Esnault. “He has not made any wrong steps at all. It comforts us in the decision we made.”

***Aston Martin’s No. 007 Valkyrie was the sole retirement in Hypercar following electrical issues, which followed an early off for the Harry Tincknell, who suggested that the nature of the Barcelona track layout was a factor in a subdued showing from the British manufacturer as the sister No. 009 machine came home for two points in ninth.

***Tincknell reflected: “It’s a shame. On Friday, we had quite a lot of optimism that we could be competitive and both in the wet and the dry conditions. But we’ve kind of been on the outskirts of the top ten, and not too much better really in terms of pace. It was a strong effort from everyone, but we just didn’t really have the pace on this track. It’s a lot of combined traction zones and exits and stuff that we’re not great at with this car.”

***In the LMGT3 class, Manthey scored its 25th WEC victory across the GTE-Pro and LMGT3 classes, its first since last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and a first for Porsche in any class since last year’s Circuit of The Americas round (ending its longest winless run). It extends Porsche’s record of winning a race in every year of the WEC.

***Richard Lietz, who is set for his 100th race next month at Monza, scored his 15th WEC win and his fifth in LMGT3, with both he and Riccardo Pera — now a four-time winner — having been part of Manthey’s previous win at Le Mans last year.

***Yasser Shahin meanwhile picked up his third win and a first since Le Mans 2024, which he won alongside Lietz and Morris Schuring.

***Shahin was also declared the winner of the Goodyear Wingfoot award, fending off opposition from Salih Yoluc (Racing Team Turkey), Parker Thompson (Team WRT) and Thomas Fleming (Garage 59) in a fan vote on social media.

***To underline the dominance achieved by both the No. 8 Toyota and the No. 92 Porsche, the two winning cars combined to lead 350 of the 381 laps they raced for, or 91.9%, which is the highest ever percentage of laps led by all class winners combined.

***Seven different crews have won in LMGT3 this year, which is a new record for any GT class in WEC history. The past two seasons of LMGT3 featured six different winners, as GTE-Pro in 2016 and the 2018-19 ‘super season’.

***Dan Harper reckons he would have missed out on an LMGT3 podium in the No. 69 WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO he shared with Anthony McIntosh and Parker Thompson if the race had lasted one more lap as energy levels ran low. He fell to third behind the No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Marvin Kirchhoefer with ten minutes left and finished just 0.256 seconds ahead of the No. 34 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.

***Harper told Sportscar365: “We knew the McLaren was going to get us because we had to save quite a bit of energy to make it to the end. I think there was only one megajoule left so I don’t think I would’ve made it to Turn 1 pushing. I was pushing as hard as I could but was having to manage the fuel, which then made the minimum tire pressure situation very difficult so I was managing a lot of things. It was good fun.”

***Ben Keating said the Barcelona contest was “not the race we wanted” as the LMGT3 points-leading No. 33 Corvette finished seventh. It lost time by being forced to delay its switch from wets to slicks as the cars in the surrounding pit boxes were already changing tires, while Jonny Edgar also received a ten-second penalty for contact.

***Edgar’s points lead has been trimmed from 24 to 18 by the race-winning No. 92 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo crew, although Keating told Sportscar365: “But seventh is a whole lot better than 11th — we got some points. We hoped the No. 69 BMW wouldn’t be able to make it on fuel as it would’ve been a big help to have been one or two places higher up, just a couple more points.”

***The No. 88 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 EVO was disqualified having run out of fuel on the cooldown lap, having initially finished ninth. That capped off a weekend to forget for the Blue Oval as the sister No. 77 car ran out of fuel on the final lap.

***Additionally, the No. 58 Garage 59 McLaren, which has given a post-race time penalty of 44 seconds for ignoring a black-and-orange flag that cost it the point it would have gained from the No. 88 car’s disqualification, finally ending up 11th.

***Those issues promoted the Fuji-winning No. 32 WRT BMW to a single point for tenth as Darren Leung returned to Barcelona after contesting the previous evening’s Portimao GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup finale.

***Leung said he enjoyed his weekend despite the logistical difficulties of traveling back and forth between the two venues. “I was surprised at how much pressure I felt with the timescales of FP3 and qualifying in Barcelona,” he said. “I had half an hour at the track and then I’m out there. I’ve done 12 laps, I’ve barely looked at data and I’m in the car for qualifying. And then the whole journey on Saturday night really amped up the challenge. It took us nine hours to get from Faro to Barcelona. It was definitely very challenging. I’ve loved doing it. I wouldn’t do it every weekend, but I’d probably do it again.”

***WEC organizers claimed a three-day crowd of 55,511 spectators for the inaugural 6H Barcelona. While more than respectable for what was a stand-in event, it nonetheless marked the smallest attendance of the WEC season so far, with around 14,000 fewer fans than September’s Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of The Americas.

***The WEC season will conclude with the 6 Hours of Monza on Nov. 6-8 as the championship head to the Italian venue for the first time since 2023.