The return of Lone Star Le Mans to the WEC calendar last weekend produced a memorable race and a number of notable stats from the winning teams in both categories.
Staring with Hypercar, the #83 AF Corse Ferrari became the sixth different winning car in six FIA WEC races in 2024.
“Hats off to the championship promoter to provide a platform which allows everyone to win. I mean, that doesn’t mean that one race, one car is much faster than the other one. It’s just that the championship is so tight that every single small thing can have an effect on the race result,” said Yifei Ye.
“I’m super happy with this victory, with all the strong manufacturers involved, it just gives more value to the win at the end.”
All three race winners in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P are the first representatives of their nations to take an overall win in the FIA WEC with Ye Yifei (China), Robert Kubica (Poland) and Robert Shwartzman (Israel).
And Kubica became only the third driver to take both an overall win in a WEC race and a Formula One race win after Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso.
“We opted for a bit different strategy on the tyres,” he said. “I think it was giving us a better understanding of what we could play in the later part of the race and I think I was the correct choice.
“I was quite confident this will work. And it did work. I think we had a good base.”
The win in COTA for the Ferrari marks the first time in history that the ‘Prancing Horse’ has won two FIA World Championship races overall in different disciplines on the same day after Charles Leclerc took the win at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix earlier in the day.
“I watched the F1 race,” revealed Shwartzman. “So big congrats to Charles. He did a really good job, and you know here there was the same feeling, I think.
“When Oscar (Piastri) was flying there, with a fresher set of tyres, he was just catching up, just like the last laps here where everything was on the table.
“To bring it home where there was somebody faster with a faster car, but at the same time, you can’t afford any mistakes, these were two big results.”
The win for AF Corse also sees the first overall win in an FIA World Championship race for a privately-entered Ferrari since the Nürburgring in 2012 when Toni Vilander and Filip Salaquarda took the Championship race win in an AF Corse Ferrari 458 GT3 as part of the FIA GT1 World Championship.
All three of the Ferrari 499Ps have now won a single race apiece with the #51 taking the win at Le Mans last year, a feat repeated by the #50 this year.
And finally, the CoTA win marks the first win for the 499P outside of Le Mans!
Meanwhile, in LMGT3 Heart of Racing took its first FIA WEC race win.
“The car was really in tune with this track,” Ian James said after the race. “Having a good qualifying put us in a strong position. The team executed amazingly. My teammates did brilliantly. And it was one of those weekends that, you know, things went our way, and it’s great to win one of these races.
It was a dream just to do these races now, to win one is the next step, and to do it on home ground for the team is very special.”
Aston Martin also became the third race-winning marque in the new-for-2024 LMGT3 class after Porsche and BMW.
Again all three drivers, Ian James, Daniel Mancinelli and Alex Riberas took their first WEC race wins.
“Ian and Dani drove amazingly today,” Riberas commented. “They just handed me the car already in such a good spot, all I had to do was just really look after it. Be smart, you know, take care of the car in all aspects. Be smart with the traffic, be proactive, because it can get tricky around here. But yeah, everybody did a phenomenal job. I think today we deserve the win so very proud, very proud of the whole team.”
The COTA win is Aston Martin’s tenth at the Austin-based circuit in the WEC, and its 53rd class victory in the WEC, the first since Fuji in 2022.
In a wider sense, Heart of Racing has finished at least on the podium in the last six IMSA or WEC events, with three class wins featuring as part of that total.
