Ferrari won at COTA, Toyota dropped from the lead with 12 minutes left
Ferrari had the pace to win at COTA. It still needed a little luck, and Toyota's late failure provided it.
Ferrari finally has a victory to show for its FIA World Endurance Championship campaign, with the No. 50 AF Corse 499P winning the 6 Hours of COTA. The No. 50 had the pace to fight for it all afternoon, and when the race-leading No. 7 Toyota broke with barely 12 minutes to go, it was perfectly placed to pounce. That handed Ferrari the lead and turned the closing stages of the title race upside down.
How Toyota lost it
This was Toyota's race to lose, and mechanical cruelty lost it for them. The No. 7 GR010 Hybrid of Nyck de Vries, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi had climbed from ninth on the grid to lead and looked set for a deserved win, only for a hydraulic failure to strike late on, costing the car its power steering and forcing de Vries to surrender the lead. “It was a very sad end to a great day. We really gave it our all, executed well,” said de Vries, and it is hard to argue. This is the same crew that took Toyota's latest Le Mans victory, which only makes the manner of this defeat harder to take.
Ferrari's day regardless
None of that should erase what Ferrari did right. The No. 50 of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen had the speed to run at the front all day, and once Toyota faltered it came home 4.471 seconds clear of the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac. The wider Ferrari picture was messier: the sister No. 51 struggled to restart after one of its pit stops, losing around 20 seconds, and eventually trailed home 11th. But a first win of the season is a first win of the season, and the No. 50 earned its place at the front.
The race behind the result
Beyond the late drama, the six hours had plenty else going on. An earlier safety car period reset the field and reshuffled the strategies, generally rewarding cars on conventional stop patterns at the expense of those gambling on alternate ones. That reshaped the order behind the leaders and set up a tight scrap for the podium places, which the No. 38 JOTA Cadillac eventually won from the No. 35 Alpine A424, the Alpine slipping to third once its five-second penalty was applied. It was the kind of layered, strategy-driven WEC race that rarely settles until the final stint, and this one refused to be decided until the very last of them.
The title race just blew open
The bigger consequence is at the top of the standings. Both of the championship's co-leaders left Austin with nothing, the No. 7 Toyota through its retirement and the No. 20 WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 with a pointless run to 12th. The Toyota crew clings to the drivers' lead on countback despite scoring zero, but a race in which both title favourites failed has thrown the run-in wide open, and that is good news for everyone chasing.
Aston wins the GT3 battle
There was a happier ending in LMGT3, where Heart of Racing's No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Mattia Drudi took the class win ahead of the No. 91 Manthey Porsche. It is a good day for a team we have been following closely, with James also the man overseeing Aston's Valkyrie Hypercar programme, and a reminder that Heart of Racing knows how to win when it matters.
AutoNext Take
Endurance racing can be magnificent and merciless in the same afternoon, and COTA was both. Toyota did almost everything right, drove a near-perfect race from ninth to the front, and got nothing for it. Ferrari had the pace to be in that fight, and the No. 50 drove a clean, well-judged race to put itself in position, even as the sister No. 51's day unravelled with a pit-stop problem that cost it around 20 seconds. When Toyota broke, the No. 50 was right there to take it, and that mix of genuine pace and a bit of fortune is exactly how these long races are so often decided.
What it does, wonderfully, is set up the rest of the season. Two championship leaders scoring zero on the same day is the kind of result that resets everything, and a title fight that looked like it might settle into a rhythm is suddenly anyone's again. Spare a thought for the No. 7 crew, who deserved far better, but raise a glass to a championship that just got a great deal more interesting.
