Toyota’s COTA heartbreak hands Ferrari first 2026 WEC win

Ferrari won the Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of the Americas on Sunday without ever looking like the fastest car. The No. 7 Toyota was leading, comfortably, when a hydraulic failure with eleven minutes to go took away its power steering and its gearshifts in the same moment.

The No. 50 Ferrari 499P of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen inherited the lead and took the flag 4.471 seconds ahead of the No. 38 Cadillac. It is Ferrari’s first World Endurance Championship win of 2026.

De Vries had built the lead from ninth on the grid

Nyck de Vries, Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway started ninth and worked their way to the front on a short fuel strategy. When the race resumed after a safety car with 45 minutes left, de Vries set fastest laps and pulled clear. Toyota had never won at COTA, and this looked like the day.

Then it went. “The lap prior I started hearing and feeling a few odd things but wasn’t thinking too much at the time,” de Vries said. “And then coming out of Turn 9 I lost the power-steering and picked up a hydraulic alarm.” The car was retired from the lead.

Toyota had never seen this failure before

Technical director David Floury confirmed the team had never encountered this particular hydraulic problem before, which makes it harder to plan around and harder to accept. It was not a known weakness. It was a freak failure at the worst possible moment.

“When you fight for a championship you need to have everything perfect,” Floury said, “and today we had a problem with car No. 8 which led to a drive-through and a problem on car No. 7 which led to retiring the car, so we cannot be happy. To fight for the championship you need to take every opportunity and we failed to do that here. We should not blame anyone else but ourselves for what happened today. At the end of the day we come back with not much, not enough.”

The sister Ferrari threw away the race it was meant to win

The No. 51 Ferrari had gone into the weekend as the car with the momentum, and lost it in the pit lane. Antonio Giovinazzi stalled at a restart at the start of the third hour, a mistake that cost around thirty seconds, and the car never recovered.

The No. 50 crew had no such problem. Nielsen had already passed Charles Milesi’s Alpine in traffic to take second before the Toyota failed, so this was not purely a gift.

Cadillac promoted to second by an Alpine penalty

Alpine crossed the line second with the No. 35 of Antonio Felix da Costa, Charles Milesi and Ferdinand Habsburg, then lost the place to a five second penalty for an unsafe pit release. That handed second to the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac of Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and Sebastien Bourdais, with Alpine third. It is Alpine’s first podium of what is its final WEC season.

Aston Martin, which had topped both classes in practice at COTA, converted that into fourth in the Hypercar class with the No. 007 Valkyrie. The No. 8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa finished sixth after Hirakawa was given a drive-through for speeding in the pit lane, caused by a technical malfunction rather than by the driver.

Heart of Racing wins LMGT3

The LMGT3 class went to the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage of Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Mattia Drudi, ahead of the No. 91 Manthey DK Engineering Porsche and the sister No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin, according to the final classification.

The title fight is unchanged at the top, which suits Toyota

Toyota came to Texas leading the manufacturers’ standings on 132 points to BMW’s 127, with the No. 7 crew tied on 75 points at the head of the drivers’ championship alongside BMW’s René Rast and Robin Frijns.

Losing a certain win should have been a disaster. It was not, quite, because the BMW No. 20 also went pointless at COTA, so the drivers’ championship stays level at the top and Toyota still leads the manufacturers’ table. Ferrari’s 25 points move them up from 88.

Our view: Toyota lost more than 25 points on Sunday

The arithmetic says Toyota got away with it. Their nearest rivals did not score either, so the gaps barely moved. The mood in the garage will not reflect that, and Floury’s language, one of the worst afternoons the team has had, tells you why.

With three rounds left, a team fighting on two fronts cannot afford to convert a dominant afternoon into eight points. Toyota did that with a penalty on one car and a failure it has never seen on the other. Ferrari, meanwhile, spent the season being quick without winning, and finally has one on the board without needing to be the fastest car on the day.

Three rounds remain. The 6 Hours of Fuji on 27 September comes first, then the 6 Hours of Barcelona on 16 to 18 October, the championship’s first visit to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, and the season ends with the 6 Hours of Monza from 6 to 8 November. Both replaced the cancelled Qatar and Bahrain rounds.

More on the FIA WEC: WEC 2026 hub, every 2026 race result, championship standings, the Hypercar class explained and how Hyperpole works.