How "making no mistakes" was pivotal in Toyota pipping Ferrari at WEC 2026 opener

Toyota and Ferrari each reckoned the other had the fastest car at Imola on Sunday. They were both right to some extent. But exactly when the Japanese machine was faster than its Italian rival explained why it came out on top in the six-hour season opener for the 2026 World Endurance Championship.

There was, however, arguably a little bit of good fortune involved in its victory. Ferrari’s 499P was the quicker of the pair of Le Mans Hypercars over the first stint on a set of the new medium-compound Michelin slicks. But the heavily-revised Toyota TR010 HYBRID had the edge over the next stint, and this gave the Toyota Racing squad the confidence to go for a triple two hours into the race.

When a Full Course Yellow was called shortly after the second pit cycle, it allowed the leading Toyota a more or less free stop to change all four tyres. It put the #8 car shared by Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi in the pound seats for the remainder and was the foundation of a 13s victory for the trio over the chasing #51 Ferrari shared by James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi.

The Ferrari in which Giovinazzi had taken pole by the narrowest of margins - just a shade over one hundredth of a second from Hirakawa - led the way in Calado’s hands over the opening two stints. The Toyota, meanwhile, started by Hartley dropped to third behind the second of the factory Ferraris, which Miguel Molina had gone to the grid on Michelin’s soft option. The gap between the top two marques at Imola went up to as much as six and a bit seconds over the first hour.

But after Hartley jumped Molina at the first round of stops shortly before one of the event’s two Virtual Safety Cars that led into the real thing, Calado’s margin out front was never much more than a couple of seconds. The race turned when Calado handed over to Pier Guidi, who was given two new mediums on the hard-worked right side of the car. Hirakawa, meanwhile, had continued on the tyres on which Hartley started when he took over two laps earlier, getting the undercut and taking the lead.

Just five laps after the Ferrari stopped, a second VSC gave Toyota the chance to put Hirakawa on four new mediums and stay in front even though the chasing Ferrari only swapped out the ageing tyres on the left side of the car. Hirakawa had his mirrors full of a blood red car while the Ferrari’s rubber was at its freshest, but in the second half of their respective doubles, he was able to edge away into a lead that stood at as much as six seconds.

Strategic fortune gave Toyota a narrow win over Ferrari in the WEC 2026 opener

Photo by: FIA WEC / DPPI

The Toyota’s lightfootedness on its mediums came into play again over the final third of the race. Rain had been forecast, though the predicted thunderstorms never materialised and the drivers only had to contend with the spots of rain. Buemi and Giovinazzi were given softs when they climbed in for the run to the flag, but Toyota opted to send Kamui Kobayashi on his way on the same set of mediums that had been put on the #7 car two hours earlier when Nyck de Vries took over from Mike Conway.

The tactic vaulted a car that had made steady progress up from sixth on the grid ahead of Giovinazzi. It allowed Buemi some breathing space and ensured that the Ferrari never came within anything approaching overtaking range. Giovinazzi had nothing for Buemi even after he got ahead of the second Toyota after Kobayashi finally had to take fresh tyres - a set of softs - at his last stop on the way to third.

“It was not won on pure pace, it was won by making no mistakes and executing to a high level,” said Toyota Racing technical director David Floury of a second consecutive victory for the team - it came good after a miserable season at last year’s Bahrain finale in November. “We know on this track it is almost impossible to overtake. We saw here last year, Seb keeping a Ferrari behind for a whole stint while being significantly slower, so we went for an aggressive strategy.”

Could the TR010’s advantage be explained by a lower minimum weight than the 499P? We don’t know the answer to that one, just like we don’t really know who’s got the quicker car, Toyota or Ferrari

Ferrari had a conflicting view on the pace of the cars. “Toyota looked better than us,” said Giuliano Salvi, its team and track operations manager. “I think Toyota is the leading car at the moment - there is no doubt. We thought from the start Toyota would be a very difficult competitor. We were pushing, but they were slightly quicker in the end.”

Salvi conceded, however, that Toyota’s decision to go for a triple with its #8 car proved crucial. “There was a certain kind of gambling,” he explained. “It was the correct choice when you are behind and it made their day - there was nothing for us to do afterwards.”

He reckoned that Kobayashi’s efforts to hold off Giovinazzi on tyres way past their best in the penultimate hour didn’t determine the outcome of the race. “That one at the end didn’t change anything,” he said. “It would have been closer, but I think they had the margin to keep us at bay.”

Toyota may have endured a poor 2025, finishing some way behind champion Ferrari, but it has now won the last two WEC contests

Photo by: FIA WEC / DPPI

A triple was never on the cards for Ferrari - and certainly not a card it was likely to play given that it had track position at the front of the field with #51. But it would be wrong to say that it stayed on the straight and narrow tactically. The three 499Ps opted for different tyre strategies right through the race.

The second-placed #51 car ran on the medium all the way until the rain started, while the sister AF Corse factory car, the #50 shared by Molina, Nicklas Nielsen and Antonio Fuoco, started on four softs, then went to three mediums and a soft on the left front before reverting back to the soft for the finish. The #83 satellite entry, meanwhile, ran softs on the left and mediums on the right until Robert Kubica was put on a full set of the softest tyre only for the final hour.

Salvi admitted that Ferrari was trying to cover all its bases. “We wanted this win with all our will,” he said. “We are at our home circuit, named after our founder and his son.” He insisted that there wasn’t a lot between the different strategies, even if it didn’t look that way in the final results. The #50 car ended up sixth after taking a drive-through for a yellow-flag infringement, while #83, in which Kubica was joined by Phil Hanson and Yifei Ye, just snuck into the points with 10th after AF procrastinated on when to go full soft.

There was another factor in Toyota’s victory that shouldn’t be overlooked. Hirakawa pulled out a lap that impressed everyone in the team to seal a front row starting position, three tenths up on the time that put de Vries sixth in the sister car. Given the difficulty in overtaking around Imola, there is no doubt that this was also crucial in Toyota vanquishing Ferrari in its backyard.

But why was the Toyota better on its tyres around the 3.05-mile Imola circuit? The upgrades to the car previously known as the GR010 have made for a driveable machine. It might have made a car that was for so long the benchmark in terms of looking after its tyres even better in this regard.

That generally wasn’t the case last year, however. The Toyota was hamstrung by the Balance of Performance, including the weight at which it had to race. What effect the BoP played last weekend isn’t clear. And for one simple reason. The series organisers, the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, have decided against publishing the table ahead of each race this year.

Could the TR010’s advantage be explained by a lower minimum weight than the 499P? We don’t know the answer to that one, just like we don’t really know who’s got the quicker car, Toyota or Ferrari.

Spa hosts round two of WEC 2026 on 9 May

Photo by: Andreas Beil