After a month-plus away from the game, the World Endurance Championship gets back underway with the Lone Star Le Mans this weekend at Circuit of the Americas.
As is seemingly always the concern with racing at COTA, let’s get this out of the way now and say that the weekend forecast currently calls for only some rain on Friday, while Saturday and Sunday are both projected to be partly cloudy and REAL warm with temps in the mid-90s (we all remember how last year played out in the first hour of the race when torrential rain saw the entire field plod around behind the safety car before a red flag shut things down for a bit before conditions ultimately improved).
So as we substitute rain for insane heat, it will bring about plenty of debate for how each team will approach the race come Sunday in regards to tire wear. We’ve already seen some teams comment on their potential strategies regarding pit stop cycles of both tire changes and driver changes, because it ain’t just the tires that are going to be burning on Sunday, it’ll be the drivers, too.
We last saw the WEC in action all the way back on July 12 down at Interlagos, with the race being conquered by the No. 15 BMW M Team WRT of Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor.
Through four races thus far in the very rearranged 2026 season, we’ve seen four different Hypercar prototypes from two teams cross the finish line first — both the No. 7 and No. 8 Toyota Racing cars at Imola and Le Mans, and the No. 20 and No. 15 Team WRT cars at Spa and São Paulo.
The Drivers’ point totals going into the race see the No. 20 BMW (Robin Frijns, Rene Rast) and the No. 7 Toyota (Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries) tied on points at 75, with Team WRT taking the tiebreaker due to better podium finishes.
Sheldon van der Linde currently holds P3 alone to himself with 65 points as a result of missing the opening round at Imola, and close behind them is the No. 51 Ferrari AF Corse of James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi at 57 points.
The No. 8 Toyota (Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryō Hirakawa) is P5 with 56 points, and the No. 15 BMW (Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello, Dries Vanthoor) is P6 with 50 points.
A quick sidebar to point out – the retirement of the No. 15 from Le Mans may prove to be a championship-deciding result because things would look way different right now if Dries Vanthoor didn’t suffer that tire puncture after clipping the DKR LMP2, especially after having won pole position previously.
For the LMGT3 side of the coin, we’ve seen a near-identical pattern play out, as four different cars have claimed class victory – the No. 69 Team WRT BMW, No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren, the No. 33 TF Sport Corvette at Le Mans, and the sister car No. 34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Sport in Brasil.
Speaking previously of that rearranged schedule, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East resulted in the opening round in Qatar initially being rescheduled to October. Yet, as the conflict continued through the summer, we’ve now ultimately seen both the Qatar and Bahrain rounds canceled and replaced with trips to Monza and Barcelona. So, we definitely don’t blame you if you feel like this WEC season has been start-and-stop a couple of times over already.
With four races remaining between this weekend and the finale at Barcelona on November 8, this stretch might just feel like a separate season altogether once it’s all said and done.
An important distinction to highlight with the revised 2026 schedule is the pretty substantial decision that the FIA and ACO made in making both replacement rounds at Monza and Barcelona only six hours long, meaning the standard amount of points will be issued for each race.
It’s a huge swing of available points in the title fights for both classes. A six-hour round awards 25 points for winning the race, 18 for finishing second, 15 for finishing third, etc. For the Qatar 1812km or the 8 Hours of Bahrain, points awarded started at 38 for the winners, 27 for second place, 23 for third, and so on.
The decision not to extend the rounds beyond six hours was made for logistical reasons regarding the tracks themselves, other racing series that will be taking place around those times, and the weather forecast for mid-autumn in Europe.
With fewer points now remaining on the table to be won, the importance and drama will increase exponentially for the teams in the championship hunt, never mind the teams that are currently outside looking in from a numbers standpoint. Every lap survived will be absolutely crucial, and finishing outside of the points or suffering a DNF would essentially be the end of the road for some of teams currently on the fringe of the Drivers’ championship fight, such as the No. 12 Jota Cadillac (P8/42 points) or the No. 007 THOR Aston Martin (P10/30 points).
Free Practice 1 (12:30PM EST) and FP2 (5:00PM EST) will go down Friday, followed by FP3 (12:00PM EST) and Qualifying/Hyperpole (4:00PM EST) on Saturday.
Green flag is set for Sunday at 2:00PM (EST)