Henri Dubois · Endurance Correspondent
No other driver in the history of the World Endurance Championship has ever reached this mark, and Buemi is doing it at the very venue where the WEC is racing for the first time.
Sébastien Buemi will become the first driver in the history of the FIA World Endurance Championship to make a 100th race start at the 6 Hours of Barcelona from October 16 to 18, 2026. The Swiss driver, who has raced for the Japanese manufacturer without interruption since Toyota‘s first factory entry in the WEC in 2012, reaches this milestone at the penultimate race of a season in which his trio leads the drivers’ world championship.
From Le Mans 2012 to the century mark
Anyone who has followed Sébastien Buemi’s career over the years will see this 100th start less as a sudden high point than as the logical result of a consistency that is unmatched in the WEC. He made his debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2012 and has contested every one of his WEC races for Toyota since. While other drivers switched manufacturers, saw programs end or were lured by new projects, Buemi stayed with Toyota, and that continuity across 14 years is anything but a given in a discipline that lives on long development cycles and car projects spanning several seasons.
That he of all drivers is the first to pass the 100 mark fits the image of a driving style that was never built around the single spectacular moment, but around the ability to stay consistent over a double stint and hand over the car in a state the other drivers in the trio can build on. It was probably this very quality that made him a fixture in Toyota’s lineup for so many years.
A record that speaks for itself
The numbers behind this 100th start read like a chronicle of the WEC itself: four world titles, four overall wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and 28 race wins in the series, a record no other driver has reached so far. Each of these successes was, of course, a team effort, carried by changing partners in the cockpit, a pit crew that perfected well-rehearsed routines over the years, and strategists who had to make the right calls in changing weather and during the night phase of a 24-hour race.
In that sense, the 100th start is less a solo achievement than a symbol of the consistency of an entire program that has barely changed since 2012: the same brand, the same philosophy, and in Buemi a link that connects the team’s different generations of cars.
Barcelona as a stage and a championship round
There is also a calendar reason why this milestone falls in Barcelona of all places: in 2026, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and Monza replace the canceled rounds in Qatar and Bahrain, which makes this the first race of its kind at the venue. For Buemi, that means making his historic start at a track that has no WEC history of its own yet, a meeting of two firsts.
From a sporting perspective, the trio arrives in a strong position with the No. 8 Toyota TR010 Hybrid, with Buemi sharing the car with Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa: after winning their home race at Fuji, the crew leads the drivers’ world championship by ten points over the sister No. 7 car. Barcelona is the penultimate race of the season, and a solid result would considerably ease the situation ahead of the season finale. How the trio fares in this six-hour war of attrition is therefore likely to matter not only for Buemi’s personal milestone, but also for the outcome of the entire drivers’ standings.
