The 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship yielded its sixth different winner of the season – after the #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, and Ye Yifei won the Lone Star Le Mans six-hour enduro at Circuit of the Americas.
It was a hot, sunny summer day in Austin, Texas for the first WEC race at COTA since February 2020. A dedicated crowd made the voyage for this sixth round of the championship.
Antonio Giovinazzi led the field to the green flag in his pole-winning #51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P. The factory car led away from the customer #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Kubica in second, while the other factory Ferrari, the #50 of Miguel Molina, made a forceful start to go from fifth to third.
Kubica ran in the shadow of Giovinazzi for the first half-hour of the race, and then after 35 minutes, the yellow Ferrari passed the red Ferrari with ease down the back straight.
The three Ferraris ran 1-2-3 after the first round of pit stops, but that disappeared two hours into the race. Contact between Giovinazzi and the lapped #94 Peugeot TotalEnergies 9X8 at Turn 12 pitched Giovinazzi into a spin. He couldn’t restart his Ferrari quickly, tumbled down the order – then limped back to the pits.
Earlier in the race, Giovinazzi made contact with the #78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus LMGT3 which damaged the left-rear wheel rim. The stress put on that quarter of the car’s drivetrain caused the car to retire before co-drivers Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado could even get in the car.
Ye took over the leading #83 Ferrari but the #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid was working its way into the podium conversation from ninth on the grid. Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries alternated stints and got the #7 Toyota up into second position thanks to good strategy and pit work behind them.
Halfway into the race, pit stops saw the #7 Toyota swap drivers from Conway back to De Vries, with a fresh set of medium compound tyres. The #83 Ferrari on the other hand, went with the risky strategy – double-stinting Ye in the brutal heat, and double-stinting a set of the least-preferred hard compound tyres to maintain track position.
Ye left the pits with a ten-second margin over De Vries, but the Dutchman in the black Toyota hacked that margin down, lap after lap, until De Vries was right behind Ye. The Chinese Ferrari driver must be commended for holding his nerve and his lead in the conditions.
However, Toyota would gain the upper hand with two hours to go. Toyota brought the #7 car in to try and undercut the #83 Ferrari. Kamui Kobayashi boarded the car while a lap later, Shwartzman got on board the Ferrari. The undercut worked out for Toyota, as Kobayashi led Shwartzman by more than three seconds, and continued to stretch the margin out heading into the final hour.
But with 45 minutes left, Kobayashi was given a drive-through penalty for overtaking another car in a double-waved yellow flag zone, turning his 11-second lead into a deficit of about the same size.
It left Kobayashi just enough time to try for one more heroic charge to run down Shwartzman, but the Toyota driver/manager ran out of laps, ran out of time, and one bobble up the hill to Big Red (turn one) gave the #83 Ferrari enough space, and Shwartzman took the chequered flag for the #83 AF Corse customer Ferrari’s first-ever win.
Just 1.780 seconds separated the #83 Ferrari from the #7 Toyota in second place, after 183 laps of racing. It was the second-closest overall finish in the brief history of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
It was the first win for the Ferrari 499P outside its two wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the first Hypercar class win for all three drivers. And on a day that began with Charles Leclerc winning the Formula One Italian Grand Prix for Ferrari, a WEC overall win at COTA was the perfect way to cap off a perfect day for the Tifosi around the world.
Kobayashi and De Vries’ runner-up finish helped them gain ground in the Drivers’ Championship, but the #7 Toyota’s result as the top-placing factory car propelled Toyota back to the lead in the Hypercar Manufacturers’ Championship over Porsche.
The #50 AF Corse Ferrari (Antonio Fuoco/Miguel Molina/Nicklas Nielsen) finished third, running solidly in the podium places for most of the day, to help the Le Mans-winning crew gain ground in the Drivers’ Championship as well.
COTA yielded a season-best fourth-place finish for the #2 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R (Earl Bamber/Alex Lynn), and fifth place for the #35 Alpine Endurance Team A424 (Paul-Loup Chatin/Ferdinand Habsburg/Charles Milesi) – by far the A424’s best-ever result.
Bamber and Habsburg collided on the opening lap and suffered their own consequences – damage for the #2 Cadillac, and a drive-through for Habsburg – but both cars recovered to score well-earned, top-five finishes.
The #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport (Kevin Estre/Laurens Vanthoor/Andre Lotterer) had a tough fight from 14th starting position to sixth place at the end. Estre had a close call down the back straight after a reckless block from the #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi nearly pushed the Frenchman into the wall. Estre then got a drive-through penalty for the same offence as Kobayashi received.
It put the #6 behind the #20 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 (Sheldon van der Linde/Robin Frijns/Rene Rast) which was tracking for its best day in WEC by far, even after the #20 car picked up a drive-through penalty which took it out of the top five.
But with just ten minutes left, the Stewards dropped the hammer on the #20 – giving it a 100-second stop-and-hold penalty for a technical infringement. The #6 Porsche moved back up to sixth, and stayed there until the end.
Estre, Vanthoor, and Lotterer’s gritty drive helped them maintain a 12-point lead in the Hypercar World Drivers’ Championship on a day where their advantage appeared in serious jeopardy. Fuoco, Molina, and Nielsen are now tied on points with Kobayashi & De Vries.
And the #5 Penske Porsche (Matt Campbell/Michael Christensen/Frédéric Makowiecki) came right behind them in seventh, recovering from an embarrassing issue at the start – when they left a safety cover on the pitot tube, an air intake above the cockpit, and had to pit early.
The #20 WRT BMW’s late misfortune was a backbreaker – the #20 car ran in the top five all day, and Rast made a beautiful pass around the outside of the Turn 16-17-18 complex to get by the #50 Ferrari for second place at one stage. But it wasn’t all a waste for BMW today, the #15 car (Dries Vanthoor/Raffaele Marciello/Marco Wittmann) matched its best finish in eighth, recovering from a Wittmann spin that dropped the car out of fourth.
Rounding out the points finishers were the #36 Alpine (Nicolas Lapierre/Mick Schumacher/Matthieu Vaxiviere) in ninth – the first double-points finish for Alpine – and in tenth, the #38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche (Jenson Button/Philip Hanson/Oliver Rasmussen) salvaged a point after a miserable day for the sister #12 car.
Norman Nato crawled back to the garage from eighth place and the #12 JOTA Porsche made repeated trips in and out of the garage, unable to solve recurring mechanical gremlins before the car was mercifully retired in the last hour, joining the #94 Peugeot and #51 Ferrari as the premier category’s only retirements.
Peugeot’s sole-surviving #93 car missed the points in 12th, as did the #63 Lamborghini Iron Lynx SC63, in 14th.
Heart of Racing Team claimed a commanding first victory in the LMGT3 class. Ian James, Daniel Mancinelli, and Alex Riberas took the chequered flag with a margin of 21 seconds over the #92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Aliaksandr Malykhin, Joel Sturm, and Klaus Bachler.
Starting from Pole Position, the #27 led the race faultlessly on the way to a comprehensive win. It is the first victory for the American team this season, as well as the first ever victory of the Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGT3 in the World Endurance Championship.
The #92 kept pressuring the #27 throughout the race, yet it was never in a position to overtake the Aston and win. The success ballast acquired throughout the season may have been one of the reasons behind this minor lack of speed. But with this result, Manthey PureRxcing keeps the lead of the LMGT3 Endurance Trophy.
The other Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R – the #91 shared by Yasser Shahin, Morris Schuring and Richard Lietz – snatched third in class, some 52 seconds behind the LMGT3 winning car. The #91 crew trails that of the #92 by 28 points with two races left.
Just off the podium was the #59 United Autosports McLaren 720S LMGT3 Evo driven by James Cottingham, Nicolas Costa, and Grégoire Saucy. That car fought hard throughout the race with the Team WRT BMW M4s including the #31 which completed the top five.
Further down in the ranks, the best positioned Ford Mustang LMGT3 was the #77 Proton Competition Ford in sixth position. The best of the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 LMGT3 Rs was the #82 TF Sport Corvette in eighth position – while the best of the Ferrari 296 LMGT3s was the #55 Vista AF Corse Ferrari in tenth position.
The Lexus RC F LMGT3s had another discreet race, finishing in 9th and 11th position respectively.
But it was another race with a disappointing outcome for the #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracán LMGT3 EVO2. During the first two hours of the race, Sarah Bovy fought hard with the LMGT3 leading car. The Belgian often lied in the slipstream of the #27 Aston Martin but Bovy was unable to make a decisive move on Ian James.
Once Rahel Frey replaced the Belgian, the #85 Lamborghini dropped to third place but fought for second position with Rui Andrade in the #81 TF Sport Corvette. The two cars had contact at Turn 15 which led to significant damage for the #85. The Lamborghini was repaired, but the Iron Dames lost any hope of a top-ten finish after that. They took the chequered flag in 13th position while the #81 retired during the final hour of the race.
Two cars fell just short of the chequered flag in the final hour: The #88 Proton Competition Mustang stopped in the esses with just 37 minutes remaining, and the #46 Team WRT BMW went to the garage with less than 15 minutes left with a power steering problem, knocking the crew anchored by Valentino Rossi out of contention for a top-five finish.
There were two other retirements in the category. The #777 D’Station Racing Aston Martin encountered technical issues which led to lengthy repairs. The car temporarily returned to the track before retiring right around mid-race.
Finally, the #54 Vista AF Corse Ferrari stopped on track while heading to the pre-grid. The car was brought back to its garage for repairs and joined the race 35 minutes after the green light. The car only covered 54 laps and retired.
Images © Andrew “Skippy” Hall / Dailysportscar.com
