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After a 2025 season of strife, Toyota returns to the top with a win for the No. 8 TR010 in the 6 Hours of Imola Sunday afternoon to open the World Endurance Challenge season.
Toyota's win comes on the debut of the TR010, the updated and rebranded GR010, after dropping the Gazoo Racing moniker this offseason.
Ryo Hirakawa nearly put the car on pole Saturday before a late flyer set by Antonio Giovinazzi gave Ferrari for the catbird seat to defend their 2025 title. The No. 8 crew of Hirakawa, Sebastien Buemi, and Brendon Hartley dominated the majority of the race, especially after the halfway mark, in which they led flat out minus pit cycles. Ultimately, Buemi beat the Gioviazzi in the No. 51 Ferrari 499P to the line by 13.352 seconds.
"It feels so good to win for the TR010 debut," Hartley told the WEC broadcast post-race. "It started yesterday with Ryo in qualifying, putting it on the front row. We didn't actually expect that. We'd been behind in all the sims. He pulled the lap out of nowhere, put us in a great position, and then I think we've all done the job. The strategy was on point. We went three stents in the beginning.
"We needed to get that virtual safety car, which actually came. But either way we managed the tires well. And then a bit of team play at the end. The sister car going long, getting in front of the Ferrari, giving us that little bit of margin. It was, yeah, it feels like a special day here in Italy and in red. Couldn't be happier, honestly. What a start to the season for us.
The No. 7 Toyota TR010 team joined their garagemates on the podium in third, backing up their win in last season's Bahrain finale.
After battling up front through the first half, Toyota got their biggest break when they took no tires to the No. 51 two on the pit cycle before the No. 93 Peugeot-caused virtual safety car.
Winning the race off pit row and then being given an easier stop as the field equalized.
The No. 35 Alpine A424 finished fourth and ran as high as third. Charles Milesi finished the run for the No. 35 and had to fight off Rene Rast in the NO. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8.
The No. 50 Ferrari 499P found its way down the finish list to sixth following a drive-through penalty handed out at the end of the first half.
The No. 12 Cadillac V-Series.R, which was also in contention early, fell back with the same penalty and finished 13th.
Behind the No. 50 was the No. 15 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Raffaele Marciello and Kevin Magnussen, which finished seventh, and the unrealized No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac.
The Aston Martin Thor Team No. 007 Valkerie finished ninth, while Robert Kubicia, Yifei Ye, and Phil Hanson snagged the last driver point with a tenth place finish for the communion Ferrari No. 83 Af Corse. As the entry does not collect points for the Ferrari Manufacturer. The No. 36 Alpine Endurance team finished 11th to grab the final Manufacturer point.
The No. 94 Peugeot, which qualified fourth, spent time battling in the points but ultimately finished outside of the points in 12th.
The No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren 720s GT3 Evo has had a dominant start in the LMGT3 category, first pulling away to a three-second advantage and cycling back to the lead through pit stops. The McLaren leads the No. 69 WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Anthony McIntosh and the Ford Mustang of Stefano Gattuso.
In the LMGT3 class, Daniel Harper brought the BMW No. 69 to victory ahead of Nicky Catsburg in the No. 33 Corvette. This followed heartbreak for the No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren 720s GT3 EVO that had a dominant run up front before a blown alternator in the last 30 minutes sent it behind the wall to finish off the lead lap in 13th.
In the closing laps, Catsburg was handed a reprimand but not penalized, keeping him in the hunt of Harper. Sixteen seconds back, the podium was completed with the No. 92 The Bend Manthey Porsche.
Victoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She’s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.