The summer break is over and Lone Star Le Mans week is here. The FIA WEC’s latest trip to Austin, Texas, comes at a pivotal point in the season for the title battles in both classes, which are still very much alive as we shuffle towards the finale in Bahrain.
São Paulo’s six-hour contest back in July feels like a distant memory in some ways. JOTA made history in delivering Cadillac’s first WEC Hypercar victory with a 1-2 finish, in a race that saw the formbook turned upside down.
Looking back, it was a strange WEC weekend. Balance of Performance, the way it’s calculated and implemented, continued to be the hot button topic. Seeing Ferrari go from dominant force to also-ran in one stroke of the brush certainly felt jarring, despite the fact that all the way back in pre-season, Ferrari expected to find life harder racing on the circuits post-Le Mans with the 499P due to the car’s characteristics.
The race itself, beyond the magnitude of Cadillac’s achievement, wasn’t all that memorable either, which didn’t help. The combination of the tricky Interlagos surface, its tight, twisty short layout and a lack of FCYs and Safety Cars generated a pretty flat race with a spread out field.
Setting expectations for this weekend is tricky as a result. The CoTA circuit itself does produce good sportscar races and heat, as ever at this time of year, will add to the challenge for the teams and drivers. The question is, how close will it be at the front of the field?
Last year, it was Ferrari that led the way, with the #83 499P claiming its maiden victory, the first for the Italian brand’s Hypercar outside of Le Mans. After an anonymous run in Brazil for all three 499Ps, though, should we expect them to rediscover form so soon? The BoP for the car sees no changes to weight or power below 250 kph. There’s just a -0.8 per cent adjustment to power gain and a three MJ reduction in stint energy.
Whether or not the 499Ps are gunning for glory, though, they will be in the spotlight all weekend because of the title race.
The #51 Ferrari-AF Corse crew’s lead in the Drivers’ World Championship shrank to 12 points over the #83 Le Mans-winning AF Corse drivers after Interlagos. Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado struggled for pace all weekend in Brazil and finished outside the points in 11th, as the #83 trio of Phil Hanson, Robert Kubica and Ye Yifei followed up their Le Mans victory with an eighth-place finish. How vital will those points prove to be in the long run?
Meanwhile, the #50 crew of Nicklas Nielsen, Miguel Molina and Antonio Fuoco’s title chances were dealt another blow. Following their disqualification from Le Mans, they also failed to score points in São Paulo, and as a result, have slipped to fourth behind the resurgent #12 Cadillac crew of Alex Lynn, Norman Nato and Will Stevens, who won the race.
With just three races to go, it feels like we’ve reached the time to ring the alarm bell for the 2024 Le Mans winners. A strong result on Sunday feels like a must if they are to remain in contention when we arrive in Fuji.
On the other side of the coin, for JOTA’s #12 Cadillac, this weekend’s action in front of the General Motors faithful presents a real opportunity.
If the race pace is there, then it could be another memorable meeting for the V-Series R programme. Though a 19 kg weight increase and a reduction in max power below 250 kph in the BoP adjustments for the event suggest it may be a trickier weekend for the JOTA crews.
Nevertheless, Norman Nato, Will Stevens and Alex Lynn, who have scored points in each race so far and took a handsome haul of 26 points away from Brazil, now have 68 on the board. That means they are 37 points off the #51 drivers, with a maximum score of 91 points still available. (By comparison, the #50 drivers are 48 points adrift.)
Cadillac has also risen to second in the manufacturers’ standings, off the back of its 1-2 finish. Ferrari’s lead is still commanding, though, at 55 points, even with just three points scored on the weekend. But Cadillac has another golden opportunity to make further inroads in front of it. It has 120 points, Porsche is third with 111, and Toyota is down to fourth with 95 after its first non-score of the year.
What about Porsche and Toyota? Penske is still searching for its first Hypercar victory since Fuji last year with the 963. Brazil was a better weekend, particularly for the #5, when Julien Andlauer and Michael Christensen found their way onto the podium after an impressive run. And with both cars now sporting three-driver crews again, with Mathieu Jaminet in the #5 and Matt Campbell back in the #6, now feels like an apt time to kick-start a late-season resurgence.
Like Cadillac, though, Porsche has received a weight increase (of 12 kg), as well as a power reduction below 250 kph and a 4 MJ reduction in stint energy. How much of an impact those tweaks have will be something to monitor during qualifying and the race.
Toyota, meanwhile, with Sebastien Buemi back in the #8 line-up and Jose Maria Lopez subbing for injured Mike Conway in the #7, will be eager to rebound from its abysmal performance in São Paulo, on a circuit in which it took a win 12 months prior.
The mood music within the team continues to be downbeat, as it fights on with the oldest car in the field and BoP parameters that it feels have left it working with one hand tied behind its back. And not much has changed for the team when looking at the table for the weekend, with the GR010s receiving a marginal increase in power gain, and a 1 KW reduction in power below 250 kph.
With its home race at Fuji coming up fast, it’s a crucial time for the Gazoo Racing concern.
BMW and Alpine will have similar goals to Toyota for the weekend. WRT, seemingly on the verge of taking over the IMSA GTP arm of the M Hybrid V8 project, will feel due a good result after failing to find a way onto the podium in four of the five races this year. Alpine will also be banking on its encouraging performance last time out at CoTA to fight for podium places again.
But is the focus already on next season for both programmes? Significant work is ongoing behind the scenes in both camps, as they target major steps forward in 2026 via improvements to their cars’ aero packages and, in the case of Alpine, software too.
Peugeot has its sights set on 2026 as well. Confirmation of Nick Cassidy signals what looks set to be a new-look roster for the team for next season, with rumours circulating that there are more moves to come. Lone Star Le Mans was a particularly tough event for the French marque last year. Will the 9X8 fare any better this time?
And finally, with Heart of Racing, CoTA will, of course, present yet another learning experience for the team with the Valkyrie. The results sheet didn’t reflect the uptick in performance that the team found in Brazil. On home soil for the THOR team, will we see the drivers get points on the board?
There’s plenty to look forward to in LMGT3 this weekend, too. The GT ranks have arguably produced the best racing this season, and with 20 hours of racing remaining, the title fight is reaching a crescendo.
With eight points scored by Manthey 1st Phorm’s Le Mans-winning drivers in Brazil, Richard Lietz, Riccardo Pera, and Ryan Hardwick’s lead has swelled to 13 points over the #21 Vista AF Corse crew, who failed to score a point last time out. However, this means that the #92 crew will be racing with 36 kilograms of success ballast, the highest total in the field.
TF Sport’s Jonny Edgar, Ben Keating and Daniel Juncadella, meanwhile, remain third with their seventh-place finish in class in the #33 Corvette. They have closed the gap to the #21 Ferrari drivers to 10 points and are 23 points back from the leading crew and still very much in the fight, despite the big dip in form since Qatar. What better time to get the season back on track, though, than at CoTA, in Corvette and Keating’s home race?
Goodyear’s Hard tyre compound returns for its second meeting. Cracking that code may once again be the key to victory, as it was in Brazil when AKKODIS ASP’s RC F LMGT3s discovered newfound consistency over multiple stints with the new rubber.
Whether or not São Paulo was the correct moment to debut the Hard in hindsight is up for debate, but at CoTA, with 30-plus degree heat predicted over the weekend, it may prove to be a more universally popular option for the teams and drivers this time.
With more experience to work with, whether or not AKKODIS ASP will have the upper hand on the competition again is a storyline to track. Either way, if Jerome Policand’s team is to win again, it must do so without its talisman in Brazil, Jose Maria Lopez, who will be in the Toyota garage for the weekend.
In his place is Jack Hawksworth, back again for a second start after joining the team at Le Mans. Meanwhile, in the sister car, Ben Barnicoat makes his long-awaited return after an injury ruled him out of the past four races.
They are not the only driver changes in the field to note, as at Racing Spirit of Leman, which claimed a first podium finish in Brazil off the back of heroics from Eduardo Barrichello and Anthony McIntosh, will welcome Derek DeBoer back into the fold. This is understood to be his final start of the season, with McIntosh set to take the seat at Fuji and Bahrain to end the season.
And we are getting to the point in the season now where opportunities to claim a win are in short supply. It feels like we haven’t seen the best of WRT’s BMWs, Heart of Racing’s Aston Martin, or the Iron Dames Porsche yet.
The BoP table has seen a number of tweaks to the field made, including a 26 kg weight break for the BMWs and a 17 kg reduction in weight for the Proton Ford Mustangs. Will we see new faces on the podium?
Sunday’s race is set to get underway at 13:00 local time in Texas.
