The title picture
The win at the 6 Hours of Barcelona for Toyota Racing secured the fifth WEC World Manufacturers Championship for Toyota, adding to the trio of LMP1 and Hypercar World Championships earned by Toyota in the Championship’s fallow years for manufacturers.
Sebastien Buemi was able to celebrate his 100th WEC race with his record 29th overall win; Brendon Hartley, meanwhile, scored his 26th in a race he made it to 50 starts alongside Buemi.
The 1-2 finish also ensured that just the two Toyota crews can now secure the Drivers’ World Championship at Monza.
In LMGT3, a dominant run from the #92 The Bend Manthey Porsche trio of Richard Lietz, Riccardo Pera and Yasser Shahin puts them in range of the class championship at the final race.
The #33 TF Sport Corvette team and Jonny Edgar (as the sole member of the crew to have completed the full Championship) still hold a strong advantage of at least 18 points over the three crews that could still, mathematically at least, snatch the honours.
That includes not only the #92 Porsche crew, but also an on-form #34 Racing Team Turkey effort, with the #69 WRT BMW trio needing pole and a win and a non-scoring weekend from the #33 Corvette to get it done.
Barcelona fanbase soaks up unexpected WEC opportunity
As a stand-in event for the cancelled Qatar season opener, the Barcelona race meeting has to be considered a success. A believable 55000+ were in attendance over the weekend, many of them families, giving a hugely enthusiastic reception for the WEC. The majority appeared to stay until the finish too, despite the initially challenging conditions, and stayed further to recognise the podium finishers.
Mustangs miss out
That recognition from the fans extended to encouragement for the Proton Competition Ford team who had a disastrous finish to the meeting.
The #88 Mustang GT3 completed the race before apparently running out of fuel and requiring a tow to Parc Ferme; the car was then disqualified as a result.
For the sister car, the result was similar, but with a touch more theatre. Ben Tuck ran out of fuel with a couple of corners to go and coasted to a halt less than 100 metres from the finish line.
Marshals attended post-race and were given loud cheers of encouragement as they pushed the car towards the line, only to good-naturedly transition to loud boos as the car was turned hard right and pushed through the open gate to Parc Ferme. The car was also excluded for not taking the chequered flag.
Quinn relishes Hypercar Debut
The end result for the #93 Peugeot 9X8 of debutant Alex Quinn, Paul Di Resta and Nick Cassidy: 12th, wasn’t a standout one, but for the team’s British rookie, it was a hugely positive weekend, helping him find his feet before his first full season in 2027.
“I’m going home really happy,” he told DSC. “The good thing is we made a huge amount of progress throughout the weekend.
“Actually, we had pretty good pace in the race. The frustrating thing is we were stuck behind a BMW, but that’s only a positive. That means we had good pace, and when we did get past, we were able to actually do quite a good lap time on used tyres at that point.
“I learned a huge amount, and it’s been a huge learning curve, helped enormously by the whole team, every single person, just making it like a nice relaxing environment in the lead-up to the race.”
There will be more from Alex on DSC later in the week.
Molina Unsurprised By Toyota Pace
Miguel Molina was in no way surprised by the pace that Toyota Racing showed en route to a dominant 1-2 finish.
“We know that when they need to go fast, they go fast. They showed it in Le Mans, and they showed it again here,” he said.
“When they need to open the throttle, they open it. For them, it was a good chance to win the championship here, and they did it with first and second. So it’s clear!”
In answer to a question on whether Toyota’s much-talked-about better tyre management was a major factor, Molina was blunt:
“It was a consistently fast pace, faster than us and everybody else, so it was not about degradation. It was about pure pace. They were one second faster in all conditions and in all parts of the track. So I don’t think it’s related to degradation.
“For Monza, well, we will try our best. We will go for all in there, and no, we cannot have any chance to win the championship; we will go for a flat-out race, as we did here, and we will see if we can give a good result for all the Tifosi.”
There’s little doubt that the Ferrari team is looking forward to the arrival next season of a much upgraded 499P:
“I think we have a good package. We showed this last year, but somehow this year we couldn’t. But not only with Toyota, with other manufacturers. So our car is the same, and we are struggling more. I expect next year to perhaps be a bit of a swing back in the right direction, though. I hope so!”
Van der Linde On A Continued Dip In Form For BMW
Sheldon van de Linde was obviously disappointed in a result that saw the BMW squad out of the running for the Drivers’ World Championship and beaten to the Manufacturers’ title by Toyota. There will be more from the #20 BMW man later this week, but for now he was realistic about the core reason for the #20 being out of contention for race honours in Spain
“We knew coming into the weekend it would be tough,” he said. “We had a test here two months ago, and the car wasn’t great. Cadillac was here as well, and compared to them, we were already struggling quite a bit, so we knew that if it was a full dry race it would be difficult.
“The wet pace though looked a bit more promising at the start of the race, for the first hour or two. Then obviously we got the penalty with the tyre pressure, so execution just wasn’t as good as it needed to be on a day like today, where we really didn’t have the pace to be at the front. We needed to make no mistakes and to stay there, and that obviously hurt us.”
Juncadella Apologises
Genesis Magma Racing’s Dani Juncadella took to social media immediately post-race to apologise for what was an incident-filled stint that saw his GMR-001 off the road several times early in the race.
F***ed that one up 😑.
Sorry to the team . Difficult race later on with a couple of setbacks but we move on 👍🏼.Thanks to everyone for the support on and off track, was amazing 🙏🏼 https://t.co/9hlwnlvBqx
— Dani Juncadella (@dani_juncadella) October 18, 2026
Notably too, though he responded this morning to a small section of social media onlookers whom he believed (correctly in DSC’s view) crossed a line in their tone and content in commenting.
That came in the wake of a social media post yesterday evening from Max Verstappen, with whom Juncadella has shared a GT3 seat this year, taking aim at not dissimilar social media behaviours aimed at his GT World Challenge team-mate Chris Lulham.
