Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa beat Ferrari by 13.352 seconds at Imola to secure Toyota’s 50th WEC victory.
Toyota converts strategy into victory
The No. 8 Toyota Racing crew of Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa won the 2026 6 Hours of Imola on Sunday, beating Ferrari on home ground after tyre management, pit execution and a well-timed virtual safety car shaped the race.
Buemi took the Toyota GR010 Hybrid Hypercar to the finish after 213 laps, 13.352 seconds ahead of the pole-sitting No. 51 Ferrari 499P driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi. Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries placed the sister No. 7 Toyota third, 41.187 seconds behind the winner.
The result marked Toyota’s 50th WEC victory in its 100th series start and its first win since the 2024 8 Hours of Bahrain. The updated Toyota Hypercar also won on its first race appearance, while the No. 8 crew left the opening round leading the championship.
Ferrari controls the first hour
Ferrari started the six-hour race with a clear track-position advantage. Giovinazzi had put the No. 51 car on pole, with Hirakawa qualifying the No. 8 Toyota alongside it on the front row. The No. 50 Ferrari lined up third ahead of the No. 94 Peugeot, and the second Toyota started sixth.
Calado made a clean getaway from pole and began opening a gap. On soft tyres, Miguel Molina passed Hartley for second in the No. 50 Ferrari, forming a Ferrari one-two that held for approximately the opening hour.
Toyota answered in the pits. A faster service sent Hartley back out ahead of Molina in second, returning the No. 8 to direct competition with the leading No. 51. The battle then developed into a fight between Ferrari’s early speed and Toyota’s greater flexibility through the stint sequence.
Alpine, BMW and Peugeot could not maintain a challenge to the two leading manufacturers for most of the race, leaving Toyota and Ferrari to settle the result through speed, tyre life and stop timing.
Strategy swings the race
Toyota made the move that defined its race late in the second hour. The No. 8 stopped for a driver change as Hirakawa replaced Hartley, but the team kept the same tyres on the car. That shorter service moved Hirakawa into the lead ahead of Pier Guidi in the No. 51 Ferrari.
The call paid off further when the No. 93 Peugeot became stranded on its out-lap while running on cold tyres, prompting a virtual safety car. The leading Toyota and chasing Ferrari both stopped under the caution, but Hirakawa retained the lead and emerged on fresh tyres.
Ferrari tried to regain the position at the next round of stops by pitting Pier Guidi early. The undercut failed. Hirakawa stayed in front, then stretched his advantage beyond four seconds.
The No. 8 made six pit stops, the same total as the No. 51 Ferrari. Toyota’s edge came from the way it arranged those visits. Delaying the tyre change secured track position, and the later caution lowered the cost of fitting a fresh set. Toyota created its opportunity and converted it.
Toyota puts both cars on the podium
The sister No. 7 Toyota strengthened the manufacturer’s result. Conway, Kobayashi and de Vries started sixth and dropped as low as seventh during the first stint, but they recovered through extended tyre life and an alternative strategy. They finished third, 27.835 seconds behind the runner-up Ferrari.
António Félix da Costa, Charles Milesi and Ferdinand Habsburg finished fourth in the No. 35 Alpine, 59.385 seconds behind the winner. The No. 20 BMW M Team WRT entry took fifth, only 1.158 seconds behind the Alpine.
The No. 50 Ferrari fell to sixth, just 0.358 seconds behind the BMW. The No. 15 BMW and No. 38 Cadillac rounded out the top eight, with all eight leading cars on the same lap. One lap down, the No. 007 Aston Martin finished ninth, and the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari completed the top 10.
Late trouble settles LMGT3
The LMGT3 result changed in the final hour when the pole-sitting No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren ran into problems while leading. That setback gave the class victory to the No. 69 Team WRT BMW driven by Anthony McIntosh, Daniel Harper and Parker Thompson.
The BMW trio delivered Team WRT’s second Imola class win in three years. Jonny Edgar, Blake McDonald and Nicky Catsburg finished second in LMGT3 in the No. 33 TF Sport Corvette.
Yasser Shahin, Richard Lietz and Riccardo Pera took third in the No. 92 The Bend Manthey Porsche 911 R LMGT3 after recovering from an early spin.
Milestone win starts Toyota’s campaign
A crowd of 92,175 watched Toyota turn a second-place start into a controlled victory over the reigning world champions at Imola. Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa scored 25 points, the No. 51 Ferrari crew collected 19, and the No. 7 Toyota trio earned 15.
The result also provided an immediate measure of the revised Toyota Hypercar’s competitiveness. Ferrari held the advantage in qualifying and led the opening phase, but Toyota’s updated package combined front-running pace with the operational accuracy needed to win a six-hour race.
With the Qatar event cancelled, Imola became the opening round of the 2026 WEC season. The championship heads next to Spa-Francorchamps for round two in May, with Toyota carrying the campaign’s first benchmark victory and Ferrari looking to respond.
