Antonio Giovinazzi put the #51 Ferrari on pole in the closest Hyperpole session in the championship’s history, and then there was a race at the front from lights to flag. It was won by the #8 Toyota of Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi, giving the once-dominant marque its 50th WEC victory. Ferrari can be beaten, and it will be a fun fight to watch.

In LMGT3, a WRT BMW won (shocker), but it shouldn’t have. Garage 59’s step up to WEC almost began in glorious fashion. The McLaren snatched pole and led late into the race before conking out with an alternator issue. I expect them to get much more airtime this year.

This connects with a rumor that Mike Conway will leave Toyota to join the Ford Hypercar program, so Estre would be filling that seat. There’s a lot bubbling under the surface for Toyota drivers, with growing influence over Haas F1, a new GT3 car coming soon, lots of pieces to move around.

Drudi drives the Vantage GT3 in both WEC and GTWC Europe, but his outing in the Valkyrie in last year’s WEC Bahrain rookie test apparently went well, and now he’s going to be the guy waiting by the Batphone.

As usual in the ELMS, there are a lot of well known young hopefuls trying to stand out, and a few of them did. Doriane Pin — much to her fans’ delight — returned to sports cars, and she, Richard Verschoor, and Giorgio Roda ran up front all race long and landed on the LMP2 ProAm class podium for Duqueine Team. Jamie Chadwick, still stuck in ELMS while her coworkers go on to warm up her Genesis Hypercar seat for her, finished fourth outright for IDEC Sport with Laurents Hörr and Valerio Rinicella.

The big bummer of the race, I’m sorry to say, was the fate of Jack Doohan. This was his first race since all that messy Super Formula stuff fell through, and when he got in, he brought the car into the top five and briefly led the race. The fight was on for second place all the way to the end, but after light contact making the pass for P2, something went wrong with the right rear with one minute to go, and Jack limped across the line in sixth. The team got a 10-second penalty post-race for speeding under full-course yellow, demoting them to P7.

Chin up, Jack. There’s more racing to go.

UPDATE 4/21: As friend of the site @putdorianedown.bsky.social reminds me, there are actually technically four OEMs in the current LMP2 regulations, but everyone stopped using the non-ORECAs, so it’s a de facto one-make category. Hopefully this 2028 process will be a bit more competitive.

This category is well established around the world in its current form. It’s at the perfect intersection of being a stepping stone to the top level for both teams and drivers, a competitive place for pros piecing a season together to get more seat time, and at least somewhat insulated from the rich and untalented by LMP3. Now is a great time to push it forward.

He plans to continue racing at amateur levels, where I am sure he will win frequently and comfortably.

Anyway, the car will make its racing debut at the FIA WEC season opener, the 6 Hours of Imola, from April 17–19.

Well, Ferraris are no longer enough for Tony Fire. Last year he needed to go demonstrate that he can also win in ORECA LMP2s, which he did in the Asian Le Mans Series twice, finishing P2 in the drivers’ championship. Now the Ferrari-affiliated AF Corse team, who ran the Cetilar Racing-entered LMP2 Fuoco drove last year, is putting him in the ELMS car. You see, AF Corse won the ELMS LMP2 Pro/Am titles in 2023 and 2024, but last year they slipped to a lowly fourth (though they did win the season opener). I guess they just need a little more Tony Fire to get back to the top.

Bring it on. I hope they crank up the competition in motorsports as much as they are in making good road cars that people actually want and can afford.

This year, we’ll see their LMDh hypercar on track ahead of its racing debut next year, and McLaren execs are doing some press about how they’re justifying this effort. They’re calling it Project Endurance. They’re going to make and sell track-only consumer versions and host driving events with them, that sort of thing. Obviously this is for the mega-elite — McLaren’s GT cars were already very high-end, and this is going up-market — but maybe it’s also the kind of thing that convinces the mega-elite to stay invested in motorsports.

Their boss (trackside engineering manager) will be Grant Clarke, who was chief engineer of the NEOM McLaren Formula E team in 2024 and at TF Sport in WEC for four years before that.

So far, the Peugeot 9X8 has been the only hypercar about which moves are being made, and don’t get me wrong, that’s a badass race car. But the Ferrari wears the crown.

As for Cadillac, not spreading the 31 too thin is obviously a great call. Wayne Taylor is obviously behind AXR in IMSA, Wayne wants to win Le Mans with his boys, that’s fine, but more importantly, JOTA is clearly ready to do it. Concentrating all the 31’s firepower on IMSA gives them the best possible chance of toppling Penske and Porsche.

I would be sad about this, but Renault just seems to suck too much at management of motorsports programs, so I’ll get over their absence.

Speaking of fun, Ye Yifei was definitely having it in Daytona. We spoke to him the day before the race:

Watch on YouTube