Ferrari take 1-2-3 in WEC opener

Ferrari began their FIA World Endurance Championship in style taking a 1-2-3 at the Qatar 1812 km, with the #50 499P topping the AF Corse customer car and its sister hypercar.

The three BoP favoured Ferrari 499P Hypercars crossed the line within three seconds of each other, with the 2024 Le Mans winning #50 machine finishing +2.348 in front of the AF Corse #83 customer Ferrari, closely tailed by the pole-getting #51 factory LMH.

Both the #51 and #50 didn’t go incident free, with the eventual winners making contact with the #15 BMW earlier in the race which sent it into a spin, the BMW also ending up best of the rest in fourth place.

With BMW just missing out on pole, the WRT run Hybrid V8’s look pacy all night, and after their IMSA breakthrough last season, expect the Bavarian marquee to challenge for a win this season.

It was the Ferrari Factory’s first win outside of Le Mans since 1973

The pole-sitting 499P team did well to take third after receiving a host of penalties including speeding in pit lane, two drive-through VSC infringements, one for contact with the #20 BMW, and another for an off-track overtake.

The main challenge came from the JOTA Cadillac team who had taken the lead in their debut race in control of the V Series.R hypercars after both Ferrari factory 499P’s got caught out by a FCW.

But with Jenson Button braking the sister Cadillac at the restart driven by Alex Lynn, the two made disastrous contact with a promising challenge ending up with both cars outside the top ten.

For the Penske Porsche team it was a toothless defence of the 1-2-3 they took at Qatar last year, with neither of the 963’s making the hyperpole before ending up in tenth and eleventh with both suffering punctures throughout. The lack of pace wouldn’t have seen them challenge however.

The Toyota team ended up in an unlikely fifth and sixth which was better than they expected at a track where they struggled, whilst Alpine and Peugeot couldn’t really muster much of a challenge.

The Aston Martin’s V12 Valkyrie’s expectedly struggled as it played catch up to its fellow giants, with the #007 retiring with transmission issues after 181 laps, whilst the #009 sensationally lost a door in the first hour, then struggled to the chequered 23 laps down.

In LMGT3, the McLaren’s largely controlled portions of the race whilst Lexus also led early with strong pace, but it was the TF Sport’s #33 Corvette Z06 GT3.R in a thriller via a Daniel Juncadella GT3 masterclass, with the final gap coming down to just +0.493 over the #59 McLaren.

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