6 Hours of Imola: Toyota wins home race of Ferrari / FIA WEC

Not Ferrari, but Toyota wins the second round of the 2024 FIA WEC season at Imola. Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries were just ahead of the Porsche 963 of Kévin Estre, André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor after six hours of racing. In the second factory Porsche 963, Matt Campbell, Michael Christensen and Frédéric Makowiecki completed the podium.

At first, however, everything looked like a clean victory for Ferrari in the home game. Three 499Ps started the race in the first three places and also won the start. After just a few meters there was also an accident in the back field of the hypercar, where both Alpines, the Peugeot of Paul di Resta and the BMW of Marco Wittmann were involved. As a result, this also brought the safety car to the track.

After that, Ferrari continued to control everything and were leading in all three cars. However, the competition from Porsche and Toyota always remained within striking distance, so that depending on the tire or suspension strategy, these two brands were always ahead of Ferrari. But then things started to go wrong at Ferrari. First, the 499P (yellow) lost valuable time when Robert Kubica was penalized for a drive-through offense on a full yellow. Regardless of this, the factory (red) Ferraris continued to fight at the top, which was worth seeing – sometimes even among themselves, which made for action-packed events.

It rained at Imola in the fourth hour of the race. Porsche and Toyota switched to wet tires earlier. Ferrari played poker and wanted to continue to survive the shower with dry tires. However, that backfired. Ferrari later also had to install profile tires. In general, a lot of time and ultimately victory was lost.

Towards the end of the race, the track dried up again, so last place in the field was once again completed with a bang. In the final minutes, Toyota’s Kobayashi and Kévin Estre in the Porsche battled for victory on the track – with the Toyota man coming out on top. Behind the third-placed Porsche of Campbell/Christensen/Makowiecki, the Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen, which started from pole position, finished fourth.

© Porsche

Two factory Porsches on pit lane

© Toyota

Black since 2024: Toyota GR010 Hybrid

© LAT

Der Ferrari 499P in decay

© Porsche

Jota Porsche 963 private

© Porsche

Porsche 963 factory

© Cadillac

Der Cadillac V-Series.R

© Toyota

The Toyota GR010 Hybrid in Imola

© LAT

The Alpine A424 has been in the WEC since 2024

© LAT

Now with a rear wing: Peugeot 9X8

Back

More

Fifth place went to the Toyota of Sébastien Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley ahead of the BMW M Hybrid V8 of Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns and René Rast. The Ferrari factory of Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi as well as the private 499P of Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman and Yifei Ye completed the top eight.

There was a one-two win for BMW in the LMGT3 class. Darren Leung, Sean Gelael and Augusto Farfus won the M4 LMGT3 ahead of teammates Ahmad Al Harthy, Valentino Rossi and Maxime Martin. The third round of the FIA ​​​​WEC season will take place on May 11, 2024 at Spa-Francorchamps.