BMW M Team WRT’s #15 M Hybrid V8 battled its way to victory in today’s FIA WEC 6 Hours of São Paulo. Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and an unwell Dries Vanthoor, who started fourth on the grid, beat the best that Alpine, Cadillac and Ferrari could throw at them en route to their first win of the season and BMW’s second.
It was a race that played out completely differently from the 2025 edition. Last year, Cadillac controlled proceedings from the start and finished 1-2, lapping all but one of their Hypercar competitors at least once. This time, 11 cars finished on the lead lap after a tight, unpredictable, absorbing contest that saw multiple strategies play out, with just one Full-Course Yellow and zero safety cars across six hours.
Previously, the WEC’s race in Brazil had never been won by a car that started off the front row. Not this time. Cadillac’s V-Series.Rs were unable to convert their front-row lockout to a second victory for the program in the WEC, after both cars dropped time at their first pit stops, lost track position and ultimately failed to fully recover.
The #12 suffered a jammed front-right wheel nut when Stevens boxed for the first time, suffered a spin during Norman Nato’s stint and was later handed a time penalty for contact with the #87 Lexus at Turn 8. The sister car, meanwhile, overshot its pit box at the first stop, costing it valuable seconds and was later handed two time penalties for on-track contact.
Will Stevens crossed the line third in the #12, just five seconds behind the winning car, a second up the road from the #38, driven by Jack Aitken at the end.
Cadillac’s woes left the door open for another manufacturer to capitalise. And it was BMW and its #15 crew that stepped forward with a clean, measured run, ending with the three drivers capturing their first Hypercar wins.
“The car was amazing, the BMW was the quickest car. Strategy, pit stops, everything was perfect. I’m so happy to finally get this victory, it’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally there,” Magnussen said.
“I never really experienced a situation like at the beginning of a stint, I just got in, and I didn’t feel well at all,” added Vanthoor. “I had to take deep breaths to try and just go to the end. But I am super happy now.
“It‘s been a long time coming. We’ve been working really hard, and to get this is so, so nice.”
Alpine opted to run both of its cars off-strategy – similar to BMW at Spa – to gain track position and the lead in clear air. For a while, it looked to work with both A424s running well, with the #35 leading its fair share of laps.
But the team knew it needed a caution period to avoid splashes at the end, and both would suffer slow punctures in the second half of the race, forcing the team to pit for single tyre changes. The #35 finished a disappointing 10th, ahead of the #36 just outside the points in 11th.
Ferrari, meanwhile, was the surprise package of the race. The #51 scored the Italian marque its first podium at the circuit with the 499P in fine style. Antonio Giovinazzi, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado would finish just 2.2 seconds behind the winning BMW, after the car came alive in the second half of the race when the temperature dropped, and the mist arrived.
It wasn’t a perfect run, though, from the car. Calado, on cold tyres, went into the tyre barriers at pit-out in the fifth hour, which thankfully didn’t damage the car significantly or affect the cooling or pace, even though he was left to drive with a piece of advertising board stuck to the front for a whole stint.
Behind the two Cadillacs, the #83 AF Corse Ferrari finished fifth, after Robert Kubica was gifted two places when the #20 BMW of Robin Frijns and #50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco came together in the final 20 minutes at the Senna S. The #50 Ferrari, which suffered a spin from side contact, dropped to eighth behind the #007 Aston Martin.
Frijns initially salvaged sixth, but was penalised for the clash post-race and dropped to eighth with a five-second time penalty, promoting the #50 Ferrari to seventh.
Crucially, that penalty has cost Frijns and Rast the championship lead. With P6, they had a four-point cushion over the #7 Toyota drivers; now with P8, they sit level on 75 points. Toyota has also retained the lead in the Manufacturers’ standings by a handful of points.
Further back, Genesis, despite showing speed throughout the meeting, was unable to secure a top-10 finish with either car. And Toyota, this year’s Le Mans winner, didn’t score any points either. The #7 TR010 struggled for pace and came home 12th. The #8 suffered suspension damage from early contact and finished 17th, 23 laps down following repairs in the garage.
LMGT3 was wild, featuring door-to-door action throughout and, similar to Hypercar, a large platter of varying tyre and fuel strategies that played out over the course of the race.
Racing Team Turkey’s #34 Corvette, run by TF Sport, won the race after a faultless run from Salih Yoluc, Peter Dempsey and Charlie Eastwood.
The team’s strategy of putting its Silver, Yoluc, in for the start, and saving the middle stint for Dempsey (the Bronze) paid off, allowing Eastwood to bring the car home, surviving a slow puncture late on that thankfully didn’t cost the team a visit to the top step of the podium.
“In the battle with Harper, we got the puncture,” Eastwood revealed post-race. “So we had a sort of 20-minute window over the guys to sort of short-fuel and then try and manage it to the end. Luckily, the valve basically bent inward, and we didn’t actually completely deflate the tyre. But that meant we had to stop before the BMW so all of a sudden we went from thinking we were very comfortable to having a sort of push on.
“But once we got into the last part of the stint, I was able to just try and manage the gap to the BMW behind. It was flawless on every pit stop and both of these guys (Yoluc and Dempsey)… we had the best race of the year so far.
“With a green race like that, if you just tick every single box and there’s not a mistake throughout, you get the result we did. Super happy for TF Sport and happy for Corvette. What a run.”
The #69 WRT BMW M4 GT3 eventually finished second, after a late move from Dan Harper on Seb Priaulx’s #77 Proton Ford Mustang with 24 minutes on the clock. The two Manthey Porsches – the Bend example leading the DK Engineering 911 – finished third and fourth as the Ford faded on a fuel save run.
The sister #88 Proton Ford, which charged to the front with the sister car at the start, finished up fifth after a hard-charging run from Logan Sargeant, with the #61 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG sixth.
Like Hypercar, today’s race had a significant impact on the championship standings. TF Sport’s other Corvette, the #33, finished eighth, which means Jonny Edgar, the car’s only full-season driver, now stands alone in the championship lead, by four points.
Remarkably, Nicky Catsburg and Ben Keating, Edgar’s teammates, occupy second and third in the points tally. The closest crew, Manthey’s #92 trio, are fourth in the Drivers’ standings and second in the Teams’ race, 27 points adrift with four races remaining.
Heart of Racing’s #23 Aston Martin, which started from pole, was not a factor. Gray Newell lost the lead at the start, dropped to seventh, suffered a spin in the second hour, then sustained diffuser damage from contact with the #83 Ferrari. It finished dead last.
The #10 Garage 59 McLaren, which starred at Imola and Spa, was also anonymous, losing a lap when the team was forced to replace a wing mirror that was knocked off in contact.
Next on the schedule is Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, on September 6th.
Images courtesy of DPPI
