MOTORSPORT – REIGNING Hypercar manufacturers’ world champions Ferrari set the fastest times across the two test sessions in the rain-hit official prologue held ahead of the season-opening round of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Taking place on home soil at Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Italy, Ferrari AF Corse’s #50 crew of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, and Nicklas Nielsen in their Ferrari 499P set the quickest overall mark of the day of one minute 31.177 seconds in the afternoon session.
Earlier, their teammates Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi – the defending Hypercar drivers’ world champions – behind the wheel of their #51 499P, topped the timesheet during the morning runs with a top lap of 1:31.586.
This WEC campaign, Ferrari spearhead a roster of eight major marques who will contest the WEC’s headlining category again, with the others being Alpine, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, Genesis, Peugeot, and Toyota.
In the prologue, the top three in both the day’s tests were made up of Ferrari Hypercars.
In the afternoon, the #50 triumvirate racked up 93 laps in the session. They were followed on the times by the #83 AF Corse trio of Robert Kubica, Philip Hanson, and Yifei Ye, who were 0.126 seconds off the pace in their 499P, while completing 97 laps.
Ferrari AF Corse’s #51 car ranked third 0.198s from the top, with 96 laps completed.
Rounding up the session’s top eight amongst the WEC’s 17 Hypercars were the #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of BMW M Team WRT, the #36 and #35 Alpine A424 Hypercars of Alpine Endurance Team, the #94 Peugeot 9X8 of Peugeot TotalEnergies, and BMW M Team WRT’s #15 Hybrid V8.
During the morning session, Ferrari’s #51 pace-setters put in 89 laps of work, and were a mere 0.097s quicker than AF Corse’s #83 Hypercar. The #50 challenger followed 0.982s back with 82 laps run. The rest of the test’s quickest eight were the #12 Cadillac V-Series.R of Cadillac Hertz Team Jota, the #20 BMW, the #38 Cadillac, and the #35 and #35 Alpines.
Meanwhile, in the WEC’s lower-tier LMGT3 category, Heart of Racing’s Ian James, Zacharie Robichon, and Mattia Drudi in their #27 Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGT3 clocked the fastest time of the prologue of 1:42.698 while completing 86 laps in the afternoon session.
Vista AF Corse’s #21 crew of Alessio Rovera, Simon Mann, and Francois Heriau in their Ferrari 296 LMGT3 Evo followed 0.051s behind with 64 laps, and Garage 59’s Antares Au, Thomas Fleming, and Marvin Kirchhofer in their #10 McLaren 720S LMGT3 Evo were classified third 0.116s back with 78 laps.
In the morning test, the #21 Vista AF Corse was the LMGT3’s pace-setters with a top lap time of 1:42.875. They had 81 laps out on track.
Garage 59’s other car, the #58 McLaren driven by Alexander West, Finn Gehrsitz, and Benjamin Goethe were second 0.038s slower and 85 laps completed, while TF Sport’s Blake McDonald, Jonny Edgar, and Nicky Catsburg in their #33 Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R were classified third 0.104s from the leaders, with 58 laps.
With the WEC’s official prologue complete, the stage is now set for round one of eight this 2026 season. The highly anticipated Six Hours of Imola weekend takes place tomorrow to Sunday at the same Italian track.
Two practice sessions will kick off the track action tomorrow, followed by a third practice and qualifying plus Hyperpole on Saturday. The weekend’s six-hour race will then be held Sunday, flagging off at 2pm, Bahrain time.
Imola will be followed by rounds at Spa in Belgium on May 9, the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans in France on June 13 and 14, Interlagos in Brazil on July 12, at Austin in the US on September 6, and Fuji in Japan on September 27, before the WEC arrives in the Gulf.
The penultimate meeting will be the rescheduled Qatar 1,812km on October 24, leading up to the WEC’s 2026 finale, the Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain, scheduled for November 6 and 7 at Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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