Henri Dubois · Endurance Correspondent
Friday afternoon in Austin showed how quickly the picture can shift from one session to the next when rubber compound and track temperature change.
In the second free practice session for the Lone Star Le Mans, the fifth round of the 2026 WEC season at the Circuit of the Americas, Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble set the fastest lap of the day in the Aston Martin Valkyrie for THOR Team with a time of 1:52.567. This displaced Ferrari AF Corse in the hypercar field, which had dominated the morning session with a one-two finish. In the LMGT3 class, Heart of Racing Team took the lead at their home track, while the field overall showed noticeably tighter competition.
Aston Martin Takes the Hypercar Lead
Following Tincknell and Gamble's best lap, the Alpine A424 of António Félix da Costa, Charles Milesi, and Ferdinand Habsburg lined up just 0.122 seconds behind. Next came the Genesis GMR-001 of Mathys Jaubert, Pipo Derani, and André Lotterer, with the second Alpine driven by Frédéric Makowiecki, Jules Gounon, and Victor Martins already fourth within three tenths of the top. Alpine thus placed both cars in the top four, which carries weight for the manufacturer's championship standing, though a Friday practice session naturally reveals little about race trim and fuel loads.
More striking was Ferrari's fall from grace. After AF Corse had led the morning session with both works cars, the second run yielded only sixth and seventh, trailing the pace-setter by 0.454 and 0.490 seconds respectively. Whether this reflected a deliberately more conservative program with higher fuel load or simply track conditions shifting in favor of other chassis concepts cannot be determined from a single practice session. What is certain: Toyota entered the weekend as the manufacturer standings leader with 132 points ahead of BMW's 127 and Ferrari's 88, so a Friday without a best time for the Scuderia will draw careful attention in Maranello, though likely without overreaction.
BMW in Lockstep, Toyota Holding Back
Remarkably close was the competition between BMW's two entries: the M Team WRT cars, one crewed by Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello, and Dries Vanthoor, the other with Sheldon van der Linde, René Rast, and Robin Frijns, separated by just nine thousandths of a second at day's end. For the manufacturer championship, which under the 2026 regulation change focuses solely on brand rather than individual teams, such a tightly matched pairing is an encouraging sign, particularly with BMW trailing Toyota by just eight points in the standings.
Cadillac arrived at its home track with special interest. The Hertz Team Jota entry featured Ricky Taylor as an additional driver alongside Norman Nato and Will Stevens for the weekend, while Sébastien Bourdais, Earl Bamber, and Jack Aitken finished eleventh in the sister car. Toyota itself, currently leading the manufacturer standings, held notably back with twelfth and fifteenth place finishes, which for a team with the experience of Buemi, Hartley, and Hirakawa suggests a conservative test program rather than genuine weakness.
Heart of Racing at the Top of LMGT3
The LMGT3 order shifted dramatically from the morning run. Mattia Drudi, Zacharie Robichon, and Ian James brought the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo for Heart of Racing Team to 2:05.609 minutes and to the head of a grid at a track the team regards as something of a home event. Behind them followed roughly four tenths back, two Mercedes-AMG entries from Iron Lynx, first the car of Martin Berry, Rui Andrade, and Maxime Martin, closely pursued by the trio of Johannes Zelger, Matteo Cressoni, and Lin Hodenius.
The McLaren from Garage 59, which had led the morning session with Marvin Kirchhöfer, Tom Fleming, and Antares Au, dropped to twenty-second in the afternoon run, while the sister car with Benjamin Goethe, Finn Gehrsitz, and Alexander West claimed twenty-first as the best Garage 59 entry. As in the hypercar class, this demonstrates how little a single Friday practice tells about the actual race. Only third practice on Saturday morning and the subsequent Hyperpole qualifying will hint at which teams are truly prepared for Sunday's six-hour race, and whether the balance among Aston Martin, Alpine, and Ferrari at the top of the hypercar field will hold across the full distance.
