Toyota Overcomes Ferrari for 50th WEC Victory at Imola

Toyota scored victory with its updated TR010 Hybrid in the opening round of the new FIA World Endurance Championship season at Imola, overcoming Ferrari in a strategic race-long battle.

Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi took the Japanese marque’s 50th victory in WEC competition in its 100th appearance aboard the No. 8 car, 13.352 seconds ahead of the No. 51 Ferrari 499P of Antonio Giovinazzi, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado.

Rounding off the podium in third was the No. 7 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway.

Toyota gained the strategic edge over the No. 51 Ferrari, which led early on from pole, during the third hour as the No. 8 car did not change tires at the second round of pit stops while the Ferrari changed two tires.

A subsequent virtual safety car triggered by Nick Cassidy beaching his Peugeot 9X8 in the gravel allowed Toyota to put Hirakawa on to a fresh set of tires for ‘free’, while the No. 51 crew changed its other tires.

What helped solidify the No. 8 Toyota’s advantage was the fact that the No. 7 car of Kobayashi jumped ahead of the No. 51 into second by virtue of not changing tires at the penultimate stop.

While Kobayashi dropped behind when he took new tires at his final stop, the time lost by Giovinazzi in the process gave Buemi a cushion at the head of the field, with expected rain never materializing in time to materially affect the outcome.

Fourth place and 59 seconds down on the winning Toyota was the No. 35 Alpine A424 of Charles Milesi, Antonio Felix da Costa and Ferdinand Habsburg, which at one point had run third after the second safety car restart before being passed by the No. 7 Toyota.

Milesi barely hung on to fourth at the finish from the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Rene Rast and Robin Frijns, as Rast in turn held on from a resurgent No. 50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco in the latter stages.

The Ferrari that Fuoco shared with Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen would have likely been part of the podium mix had it not been handed a drive-through penalty for a yellow flag offence.

BMW’s second entry, the No. 15 car of Raffaele Marciello and Kevin Magnussen was seventh ahead of the better of the two Hertz Team JOTA Cadillacs, the No. 38 of Earl Bamber and Sebastien Bourdais.

The sister No. 12 Cadillac V-Series.R of Will Stevens and Norman Nato was unable to recover after dropping down the pack due to an identical penalty to the No. 50 Ferrari, ending up 13th.

Ferrari’s third-string No. 83 AF Corse 499P faded from top-five contention to collect the final point behind the better-placed of the two Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyries, the No. 007 entry.

Peugeot failed to get either car home in the points as its leading contender, the No. 94 that had started fourth, was 12th, while the sister No. 93 car that lost two laps due to Cassidy’s off was 16th, splitting the two Genesis GMR-001s on the Korean marque’s WEC debut.

Garage 59 Heartbreak Paves Way for WRT LMGT3 Win

In LMGT3, final-hour heartbreak for Garage 59 handed class victory to the Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Anthony McIntosh, Parker Thompson and Dan Harper.

The battle for class honors had boiled down to a straight fight between the No. 69 BMW crew and the No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Antares Au, Tom Fleming and Marvin Kirchhoefer that had started on pole.

Garage 59 elected for an unorthodox strategy by putting in Kirchhoefer for a single stint in the middle of the race before the German took over from Fleming in for the conclusion, holding a narrow lead over Harper in the TicTac retro-liveried BMW.

That was until Kirchhoefer’s McLaren suffered a loss of power on the start/finish straight that allowed Harper to sweep through into the lead, although he had to contend with Nicky Catsburg’s No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the closing stages.

In the end, Catsburg fell just 0.265 seconds shy in the car he shared with Blake McDonald, the replacement for the injured Ben Keating, and Jonny Edgar.

Completing the class podium was the No. 92 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo of Richard Lietz, Yasser Shahin and Riccardo Pera ahead of the sister No. 91 Porsche and the second of the WRT BMWs, the No. 32.

RESULTS: 6 Hours of Imola