The FIA WEC roars back into life this weekend with the 6 Hours of São Paulo, and with Le Mans in the rear-view mirror, the World Championship points battles come into sharp focus for the teams and drivers ahead of the first flyaway race of the season.
Le Mans last month was a historic one, with Toyota’s #7 crew claiming a sixth overall win for the brand after a gripping battle against the #20 WRT BMW, which finished an impressive second, and the #12 Cadillac that came home fourth behind the sister #8 Toyota.
The twice-around-the-clock classic in France always plays a significant part in shaping the title battles, as double points are on offer. The result at La Sarthe has seen Toyota retain the lead in the Hypercar Manufacturers’ World Championship and build a comfortable 36-point cushion over BMW. The reigning champions at Ferrari are third and a whopping 70 points adrift.
In the Drivers’ Championship, it’s tighter, with Toyota’s Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries just four points clear of Robin Frijns and Rene Rast, the two full-season drivers in the #20 BMW.
The #8 Toyota crew of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa are very much in the hunt too, 19 points back in third, ahead of the defending champions in the #51 Ferrari – James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi, who find themselves with somewhat of a mountain to climb to defend their crown. They’re 36 points behind with five races remaining.
Predicting a winner with the new BoP rules (with the tables now kept private) has never been tougher. But in addition to past form offering clues, the nature of the 2.7-mile São Paulo circuit (the shortest on the calendar), which is historically hard on tyres due to its abrasive surface, hills, and twisty anti-clockwise layout, will also factor in.
Toyota may be fresh from a monumental win, but you could argue that Cadillac heads into the weekend, on paper, as the favourite for this one, following its historic 1-2 finish at the event last year.
Beyond the BoP, the resurfacing work ahead of the 2025 WEC race played into the hands of the JOTA-run team and its V-Series.Rs. It meant the Medium Michelins proved far more useful in the race than in 2024, where the Hard tyre was used by everyone bar Toyota, which found a way to make the Mediums work en route to victory.
Whether or not it will be the same story this year is up for debate. (Of note, on the driver front, the #12 returns to a two-driver crew, with Alex Lynn, a key part of last year’s victory, still not fit to race.) This is the first visit to Interlagos for Michelin’s 2026-spec Pilot Sport Endurance range, and the Medium and Hard compounds are once again on offer.
Either way, tyre strategy is likely to play a role in deciding the winner (if the forecast rain at the time of writing holds off), as it did at Le Mans, where Toyota’s new TR010 had the ponies at the business end of the race when the Medium compound became the most useful in the heat after sunrise.
All eyes will be on Cadillac, which at times appeared to have the edge in France but ultimately faded; Toyota, which carries the momentum gained from a win and double podium; and BMW, following two extremely impressive showings for the 2026 M Hybrid V8 at Spa and Le Mans. But it would surprise nobody if the formbook was ripped up again here.
If we’re to see a new winner emerge, where might it come from?
Alpine has been knocking on the door for a while now. Antonio Felix da Costa, Ferdinand Habsburg, and Charles Milesi, in particular, have looked mighty impressive on more than one occasion this season but have yet to finish on the podium. Interlagos hasn’t been kind to Les Bleus, but the 2026 A424 – in the final season for Alpine – has looked significantly more well-rounded, and with its revised aero package producing more downforce, everything looks to be in place for it to convert pace into a win, or at the very least, a podium visit, for the first time this year.
Its French counterpart, Peugeot, may also be worth putting on your radar. Le Mans was a disaster, again, for the team and its 9X8s, which lacked speed all week long. But the Interlagos circuit is an entirely different prospect, and played to the car’s strengths last year.
A greater surprise, on form, would be a standout result for either Aston Martin or Ferrari, as the Valkyrie and, in particular, the 499P in the past two years, haven’t yet looked at home at all on the Brazilian circuit. The pressure is mounting for both factory teams, with five races left this season.
Aston is still searching for a signature WEC result in Hypercar with the Valkyrie, and Ferrari hasn’t won a race now for over a year; its early-season dominance in 2025 is beginning to feel like a distant memory. Is this the weekend where things turn around for one or both LMH programmes?
As for Genesis, it’ll be interesting to monitor how the team performs in its first flyaway race; though the evidence of the races so far this season suggests it will take it in its stride.
It has opted to keep its striking Le Mans livery on its GMR-001s for the rest of the season and travels to South America high on confidence. This is being targeted as another potential opportunity to score points, following a highly productive and at times head-turning 24-hour race debut just a handful of weeks ago.
Shifting gears to the action ahead in LMGT3, it’s a class that also feels like it has the potential to play out very differently from last year. The changes to the tyre allocation rules this year have seen the Hard Goodyear Eagle compound shelved, and that was the tyre which, in 2025, was a key factor in AKKODIS ASP’s breakthrough victory with the RC F LMGT3 at Interlagos 12 months ago.
This time around, with everyone back on the Mediums, it remains to be seen how the hierarchy will shape up. Whether we’ll see a mix of strategies play out, with some teams opting to change only the right-hand-side tyres at points during the race to save time in the pits and gain track position, is something we’ll have to wait until after practice to get a feel for. Again, though, the forecast for Sunday, at present, isn’t pretty, so the wets from Goodyear may need to be deployed.
It certainly feels like crunch time for much of the field as TF Sport and their Le Mans-winning #33 crew look to make the most of a golden opportunity to cement their points lead in the Team’s standings, and support Jonny Edgar’s solo title effort (as the only driver in the car set to contest the full season), if the car scores points.
This is because Ben Keating was forced to skip Imola and Spa with an elbow injury, and Nicky Catsburg has had to prioritise this weekend’s IMSA event at CTMP with Corvette’s factory GTD Pro team, prompting a return to the WEC for Nico Varrone as ‘Super Sub’.
Varrone making a one-off appearance shouldn’t impact the team’s prospects if the BoP swing isn’t too wild, though. The Argentinian knows the car and knows how to win races with Keating, having won the 2023 LMGTE Am title with the Texan. The Z06 LMGT3.R was rapid at Interlagos last year, too, so it would seem to be a golden opportunity for TF Sport’s other car, bannered as Racing Team Turkey, to capture its first big result of the season.
AKKODIS ASP, regardless of the tyre change, shouldn’t be counted out, as the Lexus RC F LMGT3s have looked strong, with the #78 in particular, standing out and sitting third in the standings (35 points back) even with a DNF at Spa, thanks to its second-place finish at Le Mans.
Interestingly, it feels as if Vista AF Corse hasn’t yet hit its stride, but Ferrari’s representative in the class does hold second in the title race after a string of solid results for the #21 crew: P6, P4 and P5.
Elsewhere, early season revelation Garage 59 will be looking to bounce back from a quiet and largely forgettable Le Mans for its cars in the wake of its maiden class win the round prior. It won’t be easy, as the team and all but one of its drivers are new to the circuit, but there are reasons to be cheerful. In the hands of United Autosports, both McLaren GT3 Evos finished in the points at Interlagos last season, and the year prior, on the Mediums, the team featured on the podium.
It’s a similar story at Manthey and WRT. Imola and Spa produced podium finishes for Manthey’s #92 ‘The Bend’ Porsche, before an uncharacteristically rough outing at Le Mans, with its best finish a P9 for that same crew. And the BMW M4s from WRT were brilliant at Imola yet again, but have failed to make an impact since.
Darren Leung, who anchors the #32 crew, may be one to keep a close eye on in particular if the BoP is kind to the Bavarian marque. He and teammate Augusto Farfus snuck in a visit to Sao Paulo earlier in the year to get their eye in, racing in a local championship with an LMGT3-spec BMW. WRT also completed two days of testing with a previous-gen M4 at the circuit in the build-up to this race with five of its six drivers.
That leaves Heart of Racing, Proton Competition and Iron Lynx, who can all make a case for a strong, or at the very least, encouraging weekend for their respective marques: Aston Martin, Ford and Mercedes-AMG.
Heart of Racing, specifically, may have the best prospects, as amid a topsy-turvy campaign to this point, it has managed to score two podiums, one for the #27 Vantage at Spa and another with the #23 at Le Mans. If the US-flagged, Prodrive-run team can find consistency, then a late title push may still be possible, as the delay to the season opener in Imola has handed the teams an additional opportunity to make up ground in the post-Le Mans stretch of the campaign.
An exciting six hours awaits then for the passionate race fans trackside, who are expected to turn out in huge numbers again after the 2025 edition of the race saw almost 85,000 fans hit the turnstiles. And with Brazil now out of the World Cup, there may be more eyes on the event locally than first thought.
Sunday’s race is set to get underway at 11:30 local time, and can be streamed on the FIAWEC+ app, with guest analyst Felipe Nasr joining WEC TV regulars Martin Haven, Graham Goodwin and Bruce Jouanny.
Images courtesy of DPPI and DSC
The post FIA WEC 6 Hours Of São Paulo Preview first appeared on dailysportscar.com.
Source: www.dailysportscar.com
