Henri Dubois · Endurance Correspondent
At the start of Lone Star Le Mans, Ferrari AF Corse took command immediately in the Texas midday heat, while a tightly bunched hypercar field formed in its wake.
In opening practice for Lone Star Le Mans, the fifth round of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship, both Ferrari 499Ps from AF Corse set the pace Friday afternoon at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin. Antonio Giovinazzi, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado topped the timesheets with a 1:53.824, just ahead of the sister car driven by Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen. With temperatures hovering around 30 degrees—likely to prove the real challenge for machinery and tires over Sunday's six-hour race distance—the opening session was primarily a shakedown rather than an indicator of race-day performance.
Ferrari leads, but the field stays close
Scuderia's advantage over those chasing proved manageable. Alpine Endurance Team brought Victor Martins, Jules Gounon and Frédéric Makowiecki's A424 home in third, just four tenths shy of Ferrari's best, followed by the Toyota GR010 Hybrid with Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa. The second Alpine, fielding Ferdinand Habsburg, Charles Milesi and António Félix da Costa, slotted in right behind, as did the second Toyota crewed by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries in sixth.
Across the entire hypercar order, the leading seven trios sat within roughly six tenths—typical for opening practice when tire choice and fuel loads still vary considerably between teams. Notably, Cadillac Hertz Team Jota with Jack Aitken, Sébastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber held the gap to the three manufacturers up front, while Aston Martin THOR Team and Genesis Magma Racing formed a second cluster behind them, equally tightly packed.
BMW and Peugeot holding back, brief stoppage courtesy of de Vries
Further back came the two BMW M Team WRT entries, led by the Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor pairing in 15th, and Peugeot TotalEnergies with Loïc Duval, Malthe Jakobsen and Théo Pourchaire in tenth. Whether these reflect genuine program differences or simply different session priorities remains hard to judge from a single practice run, especially with Toyota—currently leading the manufacturers' standings—having little reason to show its hand early.
The session was briefly interrupted when Nyck de Vries ran off track in the Toyota #7, triggering a short full-course yellow. The incident caused no lasting disruption to proceedings; the car remained competitive for the rest of the session and finished in sixth place.
LMGT3: Garage 59 leads with a visible gap to hypercar
In LMGT3, where teams continue to compete for a separate championship alongside drivers' honors, Garage 59 went quickest with Marvin Kirchhöfer, Tom Fleming and Antares Au posting a 2:06.016. Iron Lynx, fielding Martin Berry, Rui Andrade and Maxime Martin, ran second, with the second Garage 59 machine—Alexander West, Finn Gehrsitz and Benjamin Goethe—in third. Vista AF Corse rounded out the class's front group courtesy of Alessio Rovera, Simon Mann and François Hériau.
The gap between the quickest LMGT3 time and Ferrari's hypercar best stretched just over twelve seconds, a figure that underscores how differently the two classes are calibrated under current balance-of-performance rules. Crews have until Saturday to refine setup and tire management before qualifying and hyperpole determine Sunday's grid for the six-hour race, where Austin's heat and a potentially shrinking energy window under 2026 regulations will likely matter far more than Friday's tenths.
