Jack Aitken appeared to have won the pole position for the 94th 24 Hours of Le Mans – but a foul committed before the start of the climactic Hyperpole session may have handed the pole position to Dries Vanthoor and the #15 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8.
Vanthoor was notified he’d won pole position in parc ferme after initially qualifying second behind the #38 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R of Aitken, whose best lap of 3:22.559 was deleted after his fastest lap from the session was deleted – not for a track limits infringement, but for leaving the working side of the pits and entering the fast lane before he was instructed to, ahead of the two Team WRT BMWs – an offence which was under investigation during Hyperpole 2 but only resolved after the Hyperpole ceremony was underway.
It is BMW’s first overall pole position at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the first for Vanthoor.
Only seconds after learning of the change, Team WRT Co-owner and CEO Vincent Vosse reacted, “It’s great to be then, P1 and P4! We are very happy for the team, it’s a great achievement from BMW to provide us with a car. Thanks to Andreas (Roos, Head of BMW M Motorsport), he did everything. I mean, it doesn’t mean a lot for the race, but it’s a good start!”
Vanthoor himself said, “That is a great surprise! I am very happy to be on pole position for the first time in Hypercar. I take that, of course, but at the same time, congratulations to Cadillac and Jack Aitken for putting on a great show! Overall, we at WRT can be extremely happy with the qualifying results. Now let’s focus on the race.”
The tweaked Hyperpole format for 2026 began with the first stage; 20 minutes, 15 cars, trying to make the top ten to advance to the second stage. Each session would feature a different driver, and not the driver who participated in last night’s first Qualifying session.
With a heroic final lap, Alpine Endurance Team’s Charles Milesi went from the drop zone to P1 in Hyperpole 1, setting a 3:23.018 to advance and go 0.073 seconds quicker than Earl Bamber in the #38 JOTA Cadillac.
Mathys Jaubert was the surprise of the session as the young Frenchman went third-fastest in the #17 Genesis GMR-001, only a tenth behind Milesi’s benchmark!
Milesi’s monster lap bumped Ross Gunn and the #007 Aston Martin Valkyrie out of a place in Hyperpole 2 by only 0.013 seconds, while Antonio Fuoco, once dropped, could not put the #50 AF Corse Ferrari back in again and missed the cut with him.
Jules Gounon in the #36 Alpine was bumped out, as were the two Toyota Racing TR010 Hybrids of Kamui Kobayashi (#7) and Ryo Hirakawa (#8) whose cars will start 14th and 15th. It was a tough cut for the five cars and drivers who missed out – less than 1.6 seconds covered all 15 cars.
That then set up Hyperpole 2, where the remaining 10 cars would swap drivers, and had only 15 minutes to set their fastest lap as the sun went down over La Sarthe.
Vanthoor in the #15 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 set an imposing benchmark with his first flying lap of 3:22.745.
It would take some beating, and on his final flying lap, Vanthoor went even quicker, setting a 3:22.564 to take provisional pole as the checkered flag fell.
But with a monster third sector, Aitken surged through to provisional P1, setting what could have been the pole-winning lap of 3:22.559. Aitken was initially awarded a medal for his pole position, but it will now be handed to Vanthoor, while Aitken was shuffled down to tenth.
However, Will Stevens was able to put the other JOTA Cadillac, the #12 V-Series.R, on the front row – his 3:23.078 puts him second on the grid. António Félix da Costa followed up his co-driver Milesi’s Hyperpole 1 effort by putting the #35 Alpine A424 third on the grid, followed by Robin Frijns in the #20 WRT BMW in fourth.
Filipe Albuquerque was a solid fifth in the #101 WTR Cadillac – doing his time on medium compound tyres while the other drivers did theirs on softs.
Paul-Loup Chatin got the #19 Genesis Magma Racing GMR-001 up to sixth on the grid, Roman de Angelis settled into seventh in the #009 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie, and James Calado was eighth in the #51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P. André Lotterer qualified ninth in the #17 Genesis, which will start ahead of the #38 JOTA Cadillac of Aitken.
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