Henri Dubois · Endurance Correspondent
From first practice on Friday to the checkered flag on Sunday, the pecking order in Montmeló shifted several times before Toyota sealed the manufacturers' title early with a one-two finish.
At the 6 Hours of Barcelona, round seven of eight in the WEC, Toyota Racing clinched the Hypercar manufacturers' world championship on Sunday with a one-two finish for the No. 8 and No. 7 cars, its eighth such title in 14 seasons, after Genesis Magma Racing had started the weekend from pole position. In LMGT3, the No. 92 Manthey Porsche took the win, while TF Sport's title contender saw his lead in the drivers' standings shrink to 18 points. Between first practice on Friday morning and the checkered flag on Sunday afternoon lay a weekend that showed in both classes how little a single fast lap says about six hours on unfamiliar asphalt.
From two practice leaders to a Genesis pole
Friday in Montmeló got off to a mixed start. Robert Kubica topped first practice in the Ferrari, Harry Tincknell led the afternoon session in the Aston Martin Valkyrie, and by the end of the day six Hypercars were covered by 0.267 seconds. Neither of the two front-runners would carry that form through the weekend. Instead, it was Genesis Magma Racing that struck in Hyperpole on Saturday afternoon: Mathys Jaubert put the No. 17 on the brand's first pole in the World Endurance Championship, with the sister No. 19 car lining up third and the No. 8 Toyota in between.
For Toyota itself, qualifying was quietly solid rather than spectacular. The No. 8 started second and the No. 7 only ninth, after hovering in the middle of the top ten in both qualifying and Hyperpole. Ferrari, which could only deny Toyota the manufacturers' title with a strong result, started its best car, the No. 50, from eighth, while the two BMWs lined up only 14th and 16th. For a six-hour race with a change in the weather that Marco Sørensen had already anticipated before the start, according to Dailysportscar, very little had been settled.
From pole to 16th: how the Hypercar order turned in the race
That a pole position can be worth little over six hours with high tire wear became clear on the very first lap. On a wet track, Daniel Juncadella in the No. 19 passed both cars ahead of him into Turn 1, but slid into the gravel at Turn 5 on the same lap. The pole-sitting No. 17 fell back early and finished 16th in the Hypercar class, three laps behind the winners, with the No. 19 in 11th. For a team that had produced the fastest single lap of the weekend on Saturday, that is a setback that raises the question of whether pace over one quick lap and pace over a double stint are two different things at this track.
At the other end of the movement was the No. 7 Toyota. From ninth on the grid, Nyck de Vries worked his way forward through the chaos of the wet opening phase and passed Miguel Molina's Ferrari for second early in the second hour. The trio, completed by Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, held that position to the finish, ending just 0.583 seconds behind the sister car. Gaining seven places on the grid and still losing out only narrowly is a remarkable performance over a full race distance for a driver trio that is itself still part of Toyota's in-house fight for the drivers' title. The jump was even bigger at BMW M Team WRT: the car of Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello and Kevin Magnussen, which started only 16th, finished seventh, a gain of nine places, while the second BMW, after René Rast was handed a 20-second penalty for low tire pressures, stayed two laps down in 14th and was mathematically eliminated from the title fight.
There were clear steps backward too. The Alpine of Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi, which started fourth, was spun on the first lap by Will Stevens in the Cadillac, who received a ten-second penalty for it, and dropped to tenth, while the sister car of Jules Gounon and Victor Martins, which started seventh, lost just one place and still finished in the points in eighth. The No. 50 Ferrari AF Corse, by contrast, gained five places from eighth on the grid to complete the podium, while the second factory car of James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi fell three laps behind after problems with its speed limiter. For Toyota, the one-two with 0.583 seconds between its own cars was the logical continuation of a form that showed itself across the whole weekend less in individual best times than in the ability to keep its tires alive over long stints, on both wet and dry tires.
Midfield, backmarkers and a shrinking LMGT3 lead
Away from the front, the Hypercar field moved around a lot as well. Peugeot, found in the back third of the grid all weekend, gained places with both cars: the No. 93, which started 17th, made up five places, and the No. 94, starting 15th, gained two, finishing 12th and 13th. The No. 007 Aston Martin Valkyrie of Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble was not classified after 115 laps, while the sister car of Alex Riberas and Marco Sørensen, which started 11th, gained two places and still scored points in ninth.
In LMGT3, The Bend Manthey's Porsche 911 GT3 R of Yasser Shahin, Riccardo Pera and Richard Lietz took the lead early and never gave it up over the full distance, finishing 4.750 seconds ahead of the Garage 59 McLaren, which had started from pole, survived a puncture and fought back to second. The real climber of the field was further back, though: Team WRT's BMW M4 of Anthony McIntosh, Parker Thompson and Daniel Harper started 15th and finished third, a gain of twelve places. Not far behind, the Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG of Johannes Zelger, Matteo Cressoni and Lin Hodenius gained eight places from 17th on the grid to finish ninth in class.
For the championship, however, the afternoon was uncomfortable. Jonny Edgar, who had arrived in Barcelona as the points leader with TF Sport, started from the second row but lost three places in the race through a delayed tire change, a 10-second penalty and one more position to Maxime Martin on the final lap, finishing seventh in class. His lead over the Manthey trio shrank to 18 points as a result. At the other end of the field, it was a tough afternoon for Heart of Racing Team: both Aston Martin Vantages made little progress from the back third of the grid, with the No. 23 finishing tenth and the No. 27, which started last in class, 16th. With two titles still open, one in the purely Toyota-internal drivers' battle and one in LMGT3 between TF Sport and Manthey, the WEC now heads to the season finale at Monza, where it will become clear whether a single race weekend is enough to defend or overturn leads of 17 and 18 points respectively.
