MOTORSPORT – Alpine Endurance Team set the fastest overall lap time yesterday from the first two free practice sessions of the Six Hours of Imola – the season-opening round of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
Alpine’s #35 crew of Charles Milesi, Antonio Felix da Costa, and Ferdinand Habsburg in their A424 Hypercar registered a blistering mark of one minute 31.122 seconds during the second session held in the afternoon, which saw lap times tumble on the challenging 4.909-kilometre track at Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Italy.
Their lap was six-tenths-of-a-second faster than AF Corse’s leading time in the first practice held in the morning, when Robert Kubica, Yifei Yi, and Philip Hanson clocked a mark of 1:31.739 behind the wheel of their #83 Ferrari 499P.
“P1 in this FP2 – I think we did a good job as a team; good improvements through the prologue and FP1 and through to FP2,” said Milesi.
“The car feels nice overall, some work to do, but I think we are in a good spot now and we’ll have to wait tomorrow for the first qualifying of the year to see where we are to start this first race of the WEC 2026 season.”
Classified behind Alpine in the afternoon runs were the #7 Toyota Racing TR010 Hybrid Hypercar, driven by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Nyck de Vries. They were 0.114 seconds from the top.
Ferrari AF Corse’s #50 crew of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, and Nicklas Nielsen put the WEC’s reigning Hypercar manufacturers’ world champions in third, going 0.138s slower.
In yesterday’s morning practice, the AF Corse #83 led a trio of Ferraris in the leading positions.
In second a mere 0.023s off the pace were the #50 crew, while third came their sister squad – the WEC’s defending drivers’ world champions of Antonio Giovinazzi, James Calado, and Alessandro Pier Guidi, who went 0.243s shy of the leaders in the #51 scarlet contender.
Meanwhile, in the WEC’s lower-tier LMGT3 category, Kobe Pauwells, Gray Newell, and Jonny Adam put their #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGT3 in first place with a best lap of 1:42.081 in the afternoon session.
Setting the standard in the day’s opening session were the #34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R, driven by Peter Dempsey, Salih Yoluc, and Charlie Eastwood, who set a quickest lap of 1:42.678.
The WEC field gets back into action today with a third practice at 11.30am, to be followed by qualifying and Hyperpole starting from 3.30pm. The opening weekend’s six-hour race will then be held tomorrow, flagging off at 2pm.
All times are Bahrain.
This year’s star-studded WEC field features 17 contenders in the premier Hypercar division and 18 in the LMGT3.
They are representing no fewer than 14 of the world’s biggest automotive marques including Alpine, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, Corvette, Ferrari, Ford, Genesis, Lexus, McLaren, Mercedes-AMG, Peugeot, Porsche, and Toyota.
The new campaign is composed of eight rounds.
The Six Hours of Imola will be followed by meetings 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 event 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.
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