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Ferrari wins Lone Star Le Mans after late Toyota heartbreak
Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina claimed Ferrari's first WEC win of 2026 after a late mechanical issue stopped Toyota.
By Michael de Vries - 2026-09-07T01:48:00.000Z - 3 min read
Ferrari secured a dramatic victory in the FIA World Endurance Championship's Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of The Americas after a late mechanical failure denied Toyota of a seemingly certain triumph. Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina, sharing the #50 Ferrari entry, claimed their first win of the 2026 campaign following a chaotic finale that saw Nyck de Vries, at the wheel of the #7 Toyota, suffer a suspected hydraulic issue while comfortably leading the race with just eleven minutes remaining.
For the majority of the six-hour contest under the blazing Texan sun and through sporadic showers, it was the joint championship-leading Toyota GR010 Hybrid of de Vries, Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway that looked set to prevail, aided by a standout performance from the Dutch driver. It seemed the Japanese manufacturer was finally set to conquer COTA, one of only four circuits in WEC history where it had never won, before fate intervened in the closing moments.
With barely ten minutes left on the clock and an advantage of six seconds over the pursuing Ferrari, de Vries was forced into retirement by a hydraulic pressure issue. Like a number of its Hypercar rivals, the #50 machine adopted an offset strategy, with Molina moving from fifth up to third in the opening stages and surviving contact with André Lotterer's Genesis before pitting for an early first stop at the fifty-minute mark.
In front of almost 70,000 trackside fans, that tactical decision propelled the car to the head of the order, and both Molina and subsequently Nielsen dug deep during their respective stints to keep the #8 Toyota at bay. In a race punctuated by two Safety Car periods and three Full Course Yellow interventions, Fuoco maintained the momentum in the middle phase before ceding the cockpit back to Nielsen for the final hour.
The Dane took advantage of a delay in traffic for Alpine Endurance Team's Charles Milesi to climb from third to second, before inheriting the lead when de Vries ran into trouble. The #50 trio's third consecutive podium finish at COTA ended Ferrari's longest-ever barren streak in the series as the Prancing Horse celebrated its maiden success of the 2026 campaign.
Having started from the front row of the grid, the #38 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R of Jack Aitken, Sébastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber was a consistent contender on its way to claiming the runner-up spoils. The crew benefitted from a late penalty for the #35 Alpine due to an unsafe pit-stop release that dropped Milesi, António Félix da Costa and Ferdinand Habsburg to third, a result that nonetheless represented a first podium appearance of the season for Alpine.
In the LMGT3 class, the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin secured its second victory at COTA in three years as Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Mattia Drudi triumphed over the Manthey DKR Porsche crew. The season will continue with round six of eight, the 6 Hours of Fuji in Japan, later in September.