COTA Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Julien Delfosse/DPPI

***Ferrari claimed its first FIA World Endurance Championship victory since last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, ending the Italian manufacturer’s longest winless streak in series’ competition. The win for the No. 50 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of Nicklas Nielsen, Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina also meant that the ‘Prancing Horse’ has continued a run of recording a major class victory in all 14 WEC seasons to date.

***Molina claimed his fifth career win, putting him level on WEC victories with fellow countryman Fernando Alonso, for the most by Spanish drivers across all classes.

***While it was the No. 50 Ferrari that triumphed, earlier in the race it was the pole-sitting No. 51 car that appeared on course for victory. Antonio Giovinazzi led the opening two hours but James Calado lost almost 40 seconds when he climbed aboard as he could not get the car to fire up.

***Calado explained: “We had an error with the driver coming into the pits and basically the car was off for reasons we don’t know yet, so I had to do a power recycle. The first time it didn’t sync properly and didn’t work. Second time it worked. But we lost a lot of time, which put us back in the midfield and from there onwards it was tough.”

***The Briton admitted they were struggling “with the balance of the car in the slow speed” and therefore gambled on Michelin’s Hard tires to offer a bit more support. Calado, who eventually finished 11th, added: “At the end of the day, it didn’t work but, with the situation we were in, we needed to try something different as we knew it would be difficult to fight back. It was super disappointing.”

***Toyota, which appeared to be en route to victory with its No. 7 entry of Nyck de Vries until the Dutchman encountered hydraulic failure with 12 minutes to go, remains winless at Circuit of The Americas, now in its ninth attempt. The only other WEC circuits the Japanese manufacturer has not won at are Qatar (two previous attempts) as well as the Nürburgring (three) and Mexico City (two), the latter two no longer being active tracks on the calendar.

***The retirement for the No. 7 Toyota of de Vries, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, and a 12th place result — outside of the points — for the No. 20 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Rene Rast, Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde, means both crews remain on 75 points and still in the joint lead of the drivers’ world championship.

***The only Hypercar title contender to make any notable ground was the No. 8 Toyota trio of Brendan Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi, who put eight additional points on the table and now trail the joint leaders by 11 points.

***While Toyota has extended its Hypercar manufacturers’ points lead by four over BMW, to now have a nine-point advantage, BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos admitted they got lucky with the late-race retirement for the No. 7 Toyota, which if it had won, would have put the Japanese manufacturer significantly ahead on points.

***Roos told reporters: “To be honest, in the end, you don’t wish any competitor this situation. Toyota had great race pace. They managed to have a good race with the car and in the end they were just unlucky with a technical issue. For us, it’s the same like before but we also have to be honest we didn’t do a good job today.”

***The No. 15 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello and Kevin Magnussen finished eighth, bouncing back from a mid-race spin by the newlywed Swiss driver. The 12th place finishing No. 20 entry incurred a five-second penalty added to an early pit stop for Rast having contact with the No. 93 Peugeot in Turn 12.

***Roos admitted the numerous early race strategies made the opening stages confusing until the mid-race Virtual Safety Car for debris that reset everyone’s race but said their general lack-of-pace played a key part in the results.

***He added: “For me, to be honest, the race was very difficult to read, from the beginning, to understand where it would go. As always when you have a car which has a better pace, it’s always easier to move up and go to the front or stay in the front and this we didn’t have today.”

***Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble, as one of of only two driver duos in the heat-affected race, came less than two seconds away from scoring the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s WEC podium, having finished fourth in the No. 007 Heart of Racing Team entry, matching its season-best result from the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps.

***Genesis Magma Racing, meanwhile, recorded its best result to date, a seventh place finish, with its No. 17 Genesis GMR-001 of Pipo Derani, Mathys Jaubert and Andre Lotterer, who encountered an early race spin.

***A crew that was left disappointed was the No. 94 Peugeot 9X8 trio. Malthe Jakobsen had climbed as high as sixth after the final safety car restart amid some robust battling, but ultimately slipped to tenth at the flag. Team principal Emmanuel Esnault told Sportscar365: “I think reasonably we could’ve expected P6/P7 if we would’ve been in a position to fight until the end. Unfortunately we had some lack of pace compared to the group of competitors that were chasing us.”

***Things were worse for the sister No. 93 machine, which finished up last of the Hypercar contenders after the team gambled on rain arriving mid-race — “we’re still expecting it,” laughed Esnault — and did not change tires.

***With portions of the 20-turn circuit wet at the start of the race but with no rain falling, two additional formation laps were run behind the safety car before the green, as the entire field were on slicks. “I was pretty happy they did a couple more laps behind the safety car. It was pretty treacherous,” said LMGT3 class winner Ian James. Molina added: “The first five laps were quite tricky with the damp conditions, especially the third sector was… you needed to take care.”

***Alpine ended up with the biggest points haul, with both of its A424s finishing in the top-five. “It was a bit frustrating to be honest because today we had the pace to do more,” said the team’s sporting director Nicolas Lapierre. “But it’s like this, we have to accept it. It was a tough race in terms of strategy call and the drivers did a good job out there. Overall nice it’s nice to be back on the podium.”

***While extreme heat conditions initially pointed to Hypercar competitors potentially taking advantage of the Michelin Hard compound tire, all teams remained on Mediums for the entirety of the race, except for a brief run by Ferrari. Michelin Motorsport endurance program manager Pierre Alves said: “We had supported some teams here in July, when track temperatures were higher and our partners consequently made greater use of the Hard compound. This time, we had more opportunities to demonstrate the versatility and consistent performance of our Medium tire, which comfortably completed two stints and enabled every team to build its strategy with confidence.”

***Heart of Racing scored its first-ever double podium finish in WEC competition, with the No. 27 entry of James, Zach Robichon and Mattia Drudi, who drove the final stint without a functioning air conditioning system, taking top class honors, two years on from the team’s first series win, which also had FIA Bronze-rated driver James in the lineup.

***The win maintained a 100 percent win rate at COTA in LMGT3 for British brands, with United Autosports’ McLaren 720S GT3 Evo taking top class honors last year.

***It marked the first time since Qatar 2024 when two Aston Martins finished on the class podium together and the first WEC race since Fuji 2022 that the double podium included a class victory. The win for the No. 27 Aston marked the manufacturer’s 11th win at COTA out of a possible 15.

***UK-born James, who now calls Phoenix home, became only the ninth driver with an American racing license to achieve multiple WEC wins, while it marked the first career victories for both Drudi and Robichon.

***Robichon has joined Parker Thompson and Paul Dalla Lana in becoming only the third Canadian driver to win in the WEC.

***As was the case in Hypercar, there was virtually no movement in the LMGT3 points table, which remarkably only saw one car in the top 11 of the points standings, the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo, score points.

***The fourth place class result for Alessio Rovera, Simon Mann and Francois Heriau has vaulted the trio from seventh to fourth in the championship standings, directly behind the No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R crew of Jonny Edgar, Nicky Catsburg and Ben Keating, who still run 1-2-3 in the title race although Keating is now on equal points with the Ferrari crew.

***The 24 Hours of Le Mans class-winning No. 33 Corvette, which was weighed down by 36 kg of Success Handicap and had an early spin, while the No. 92 Manthey Porsche lost six laps in the garage and the No. 34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette dropped three laps down, both for steering damage. The No. 69 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO lost ground early on due to a collision-induced puncture for Anthony McIntosh.

***McIntosh bailed from a smoke-filled car in the pits in the opening hour before climbing back aboard due to neither of his co-drivers being ready at the time. It was compounded by a stop-and-go penalty. BMW factory driver Dan Harper made a late-race charge to finish just outside of the points in 11th.

***WRT’s sister No. 32 BMW, meanwhile, lost significant ground early on with a sensor-related issue on the axle and also a stop-and-hold plus two-minute penalty for numerous track limits infringements by Darren Leung.

***Edgar described the struggles of his fellow title contenders at COTA as “pretty lucky” as he battled success weight penalties to only finish 12th in class. “We had some good fortune today with pretty much everyone close to us also having bad days, which you sometimes need,” he told Sportscar365.

***Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo driver Maxime Martin believed the No. 61 machine could have won the LMGT3 class were it not for the four penalties the crew picked up. They received two five-second sanctions and two drive-throughs for hitting both of the Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evos, as well as for VSC and FCY infringements.

***Martin told Sportscar365 it was a “miracle” that he, Martin Berry and Rui Andrade still finished sixth. “We have a fast car but we never optimize so now we have to work to make sure we do at least one race without penalties,” he added.

***James Cottingham took the Goodyear Wingfoot award, in a fan social media vote, for his storming opening stint that put the No. 91 Manthey Porsche into the class lead.

***Keating, Catsburg and Edgar took in the season-opening Texas A&M NCAA college football game on Saturday evening in College Station, Tex., following qualifying, where the Aggies beat the Missouri State Bears, 50-0.

***Keating told Sportscar365: “We left the track about 4 p.m., flew to College Station, got in the stadium just in time to see the flyover and all the pre-game celebration and then we stayed through the beginning of the fourth quarter and we were back in Austin at 10 p.m. It’s fun for me that I get to go to a home game on a race weekend, cause that never happens! But I also got to share a truly American experience with a bunch of Europeans. It was great fun.”

***As has become a yearly tradition, Keating hosted more than 450 guests at the track, largely from his network of 33 car dealerships throughout Texas. A huge crowd supporters wearing yellow t-shirts were seen enjoying the race action from grandstand connected directly to the hospitality suites in the pit building.

***The WEC reported a weekend attendance of 69,204 spectators, an increase over the 66,217 crowd figure from last year and 65,089 three-day number from the 2024 event, the year which marked the world championship’s return to the Austin venue after several seasons away.

***Next up for WEC competitors is the 6 Hours of Fuji on Sept. 25-27, which will be followed by a return to Europe, at Barcelona and Monza, which replace the Middle Eastern rounds in Qatar and Bahrain to close out the season.

Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John