The Latest Breaking News from WEC

Antonio Fuoco set what turned out to be the benchmark time of 1m45.067s in the quicker of the two brand-new Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercars, which are making their race debut this weekend.

Toyota is set to face its sternest test in the World Endurance Championship this year since the Hypercar class replaced LMP1 in 2021.

The French-Canadian, F1 champion with Williams in 1997, admitted that he is still short of laps in the Vanwall-Gibson Vandervell 680 as he prepares for his return to prototype racing in Friday’s Sebring 1000 Miles, but stressed that he just needs time in the car “to figure it all out”.

This is it! The start! It wasn’t the Daytona 24 Hours in January any more than it was the Spa 6 Hours nearly two years ago. The much-heralded golden era of sportscar racing finally begins with this week’s opening round of the World Endurance Championship at Sebring.

Three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Nakajima retired from racing at the end of the 2021 season, taking up a role as Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe’s vice-chairman as Ryo Hirakawa took over the vacated seat in the Japanese marque’s #8 line-up in the WEC.

The #88 Porsche 911 RSR-19 entered in GTE Am sustained chassis damage when Ryan Hardwick clashed with the Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh during FP2 on Wednesday afternoon and it cannot be repaired at the track.

Ryo Hirakawa knocked Ferrari driver James Calado off the top spot in the dying minutes of the one-hour Free Practice 1 session with a time more than half a second quicker than the Toyota Le Mans Hypercar managed in last weekend’s official pre-season Prologue test. 

The FIA has reverted to the arrangement used for the last edition of the Sebring 1000 Miles in 2022 in the wake of the events of the official pre-season WEC test.

The Briton confirmed that cold tyres were implicated in his shunt at the Turn 1 left-hander at the Sebring International Raceway on the morning of the second day of the test aboard the #51 Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar.

Ricky Taylor of Wayne Taylor Racing-Andretti Autosport has one win and two podiums at the event, but his full-time teammate Filipe Albuquerque has a second and two third places, and his endurance teammate Louis Deletraz will be making only his second start in the event and only his fifth start…

Pascal Vasselon, Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director, insisted that the his team’s performance in the official pre-season WEC test that took place last weekend ahead of next Friday’s Sebring 1000 Miles championship opener “didn’t look good if you compare them with the IMSA test a few weeks ago”.