The FIA WEC’s summer break comes to a close this week with the championship’s ninth visit to Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, and the Lone Star Le Mans. 2026 so far has delivered an intriguing campaign, with Toyota and BMW emerging as the title-contending manufacturers, and the four factory cars fielded by the two marques all winning a race apiece in the first half of the season.
Whether that form will continue in the Texas heat is up for debate; neither marque has won at this circuit before, and it offers its own unique challenge, largely because of the climate. Early forecasts suggest we’re in for another scorcher on Labour Day weekend trackside, with temperatures in the mid-30s each day, which will make things tough for the drivers and the crews around them.
The BoP is, as expected, being kept private again, so we’ll have to wait until the track action gets underway to get an indication of the hierarchy. In the meantime, though, we can look at what the opening races of the season have taught us.
WRT has taken a huge step forward in its third year as BMW’s Hypercar factory outfit. The updates to the M Hybrid V8’s aero package have clearly worked, and the team has become significantly better strategically and operationally, reaching the levels that we all expected the WRT organisation to meet when it first became clear they were going to join the category.
Historically, COTA has been a tough circuit for the M Hybrid V8, which has failed to score a single point in the past two seasons. 2026 has shown, though, that past form means less than usual, with teams continuing to improve, cars being updated en masse annually, and the BoP system evolving. Both WRT driver crews now have a win, with the #15 trio emerging victorious in Brazil, so it would surprise nobody if the team left the circuit on Sunday night with valuable championship points and silverware.
And bagging points has never been more important, as BMW looks to secure its first Hypercar World Endurance Manufacturers’ Championship title. It’s so tight after Toyota’s TR010s failed to score at Interlagos, with the Le Mans-winning Japanese marque just five points ahead. And in the Drivers’ standings, Robin Frijns and Rene Rast from the #20 car are now tied with Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck De Vries in the #7 Toyota.
Lest we forget that since the last race, the end of the calendar has been tweaked in light of the Middle Eastern Conflict, not only do the teams now have to prepare for different circuits (Monza and Barcelona) on short notice, but fewer points are on offer too, as both races in Europe will run to a standard six-hour format.
Toyota, for the second year in a row, endured a miserable weekend in Brazil, and will be looking to rebound at a venue it has had mixed fortunes in the Hypercar era. In 2024, a drive-through penalty cost the #7 crew a likely victory, whilst last year saw its best car finish in ninth after failing to factor at the front all weekend.
It’s the former form they’ll need to replicate this time around, especially with arguably the strongest marque in Texas over the past two seasons, Ferrari, not yet out of the championship picture either.
The Prancing Horse won at CoTA in 2024 with its privateer #83 499P, finished second with its #50 entry last year, and has recorded qualifying results of 1-2-5 and 1-2-4 respectively at the Austin venue.
The #51 499P of defending world champions Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado is only 18 points off the top of the drivers’ standings after finishing second in Sao Paulo, whilst at 44 points back, a comeback in the manufacturers’ world championship also isn’t out of the question.
Ferrari is currently on the longest winless streak in the history of the 499P programme dating back to Le Mans last year, and even though its focus has started turning to 2027 with testing of a potential upgrade package at Monza over the summer, it will be eager to return to winning ways as soon as possible.
Aston Martin and Peugeot have also spent the eight-week break working towards 2027, but with both still chasing their first podium of 2026, the goal in both camps will be for at least one more big result this season.
The two LMDh contenders had contrasting fortunes at CoTA last season; the French marque finished third and fourth after excelling in the rain, whilst ‘overheating’ issues caused both Valkyries to retire.
At Alpine, the summer break has been about making progress on the future of the Signatech-run operation, and the programme will once again be attracting plenty of off-track attention as a deal with Geely appears close.
All this talk has, at times, distracted from the progress that Alpine has made on-track this season, with the 2026-spec A424 looking ever closer to being the kind of complete package which can regularly challenge for race wins. Last time out, a strategic miscall and multiple slow punctures saw the team finish 10th and 11th, disguising its victory-contending pace.
Genesis’ GMR-001 has exceeded all expectations during its maiden campaign, and now has four races left to achieve the target of a top-five result, which head of Hyundai Motorsport Cyril Abiteboul outlined to DSC in São Paulo. Once again, the Korean marque enters a round on the back foot with no prior experience at the circuit, but this didn’t stop Mathieu Jaminet from qualifying sixth in Brazil.
And last but not least, Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA will be representing the stars and stripes, enjoying its last home event as the sole American manufacturer in Hypercar before Ford’s arrival next year. The story of Cadillac’s 2026 has been one of missed opportunities, with the feeling that solid results at Le Mans (fourth) and Sao Paulo (third & fourth) in particular could have been even better.
Cadillac is also the home of the only driver change in Hypercar, with Ricky Taylor joining the #12 V-Series.R crew of Norman Nato and Will Stevens for his first top-class FIA WEC appearance outside of Le Mans.
And if Hypercar is difficult to predict, LMGT3, as usual, is almost impossible to call heading into the weekend, with the form book wide open.
TF Sport’s Le Mans-winning #33 Corvette Z06 GT3.R still leads the teams’ standings, with Jonny Edgar set to compete for the drivers’ title solo after regular co-drivers Nicky Catsburg and Texas’ own Ben Keating, both of whom are set to join the Briton for the remainder of the season, have missed races.
The #33 Corvette has a comfortable 27-point advantage over the #92 The Bend Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R (992.2) LMGT3, and in a clear example of just how close the rest of the field is, 27 points is also the gap between the #92 Porsche and the #32 Team WRT BMW M4 LMGT3 Evo, which sits in 11th.
The challenge, therefore, is for one of the leading contenders to string together multiple top finishes to bridge the gap to the #33 Corvette across the four remaining races.
As a guide for how tough this is, only the #34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette, which won in São Paulo, has finished in the top six in each of the past two races, whilst the #92 Porsche is the only entry to have put together back-to-back podiums in the past 14 months.
For TF Sport’s #33 crew, the aim therefore is to keep the points ticking along, something which can’t be taken for granted given the car’s tendency to struggle in shorter races.
Outside of its second place at Imola in April, the #33 Corvette hasn’t finished in the top six in a six-hour race since joining the LMGT3 grid at the beginning of last season, with it instead relying on scoring big in the longer endurance rounds.
With six-hour races making up the entirety of the championship run-in, bigger results than the eighths recorded in Spa-Francorchamps and Sao Paulo will be required, although these might have to wait until it’s potentially freed from the burden of having the greatest success handicap in the field, over double that of anyone else, after this weekend.
The #69 Team WRT BMW is up to third in the standings, six points off the #92 Porsche and tied with the #34 Corvette, whilst the #21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo is only one point further back in fifth. Last year’s championship runner-up and one of the most consistent cars in the field, the #21 Ferrari is the highest-ranked entry in the standings without a success handicap this weekend, and as such will be looking for its first victory since Spa 2025.
Further down the championship table, Garage 59 will be looking to rebound from a pair of difficult outings at Le Mans and Sao Paulo, where its pair of McLaren LMGT3 Evos were off the pace on both occasions. The #10 McLaren of Antares Au, Tom Fleming and Marvin Kirchhöfer have undoubtedly proven that it can be a contender for race victories, although the British squad joins fellow series newcomer Genesis in having to overcome racing at a venue it hasn’t visited before.
Last season saw United Autosports’ #95 McLaren LMGT3 Evo of Darren Leung, Sean Gelael and Marino Sato triumph at CoTA by just 0.256 seconds, following a correct call to switch to slick tyres for the closing stint.
Notably, this week’s event will be the first-ever FIA WEC race where the previous season’s winning teams are not present, with both United and Hypercar victors Porsche Penske Motorsport absent.
Leung and Gelael, however, are on the grid, sharing the #32 BMW with Augusto Farfus.
For most of the weekend last year, Proton Competition’s Ford Mustang LMGT3s were the class of the field, locking out the front row of the grid and being involved in the battle for victory until the final hour before its call to stick on wet tyres backfired.
The blue oval will be aiming to complete the job this time around and secure its first LMGT3 victory, and arrives at CoTA with the momentum of having recorded its best finish of the season, fifth, in Sao Paulo.
CoTA has traditionally been a strong venue for Aston Martin, with its Vantage GTE programme possessing a 67% win rate in GTE Pro, and 83% in GTE Am. The 5.513-kilometre venue is also the site of the marque’s only LMGT3 victory, scored by Heart of Racing Team in 2024. The American squad has struggled for consistency so far this season, although a podium finish apiece for its two entries, with second at Spa and third at Le Mans respectively, proves that the pace is there.
Lone Star Le Mans is one of the events most impacted by the increased tyre allocation for LMGT3 this year, with Goodyear returning to bringing the Eagle Medium instead of the Eagle Hard of 12 months ago. Especially given the hot temperatures forecast, and the partial repaving of the middle sector which took place earlier this year, it’s going to be intriguing to see who this plays in favour of.
Track action for Lone Star Le Mans begins with a pair of 90-minute Free Practice sessions on Friday 4th September, ahead of Free Practice 3 and Qualifying on Saturday. The six-hour race will begin at 13:00 CDT on Sunday 6th September 2026.
Images courtesy of Keith Rizzo/Sarah Weeks, Andrew Lofthouse and DPPI
