FIA-WEC -- 2026 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps

[devnull]

I'm trying to pay more attention to endurance racing. I enjoy watching it but quite often will watch Le Mans and let my attention fade to other things. Spa is a lead in to Le Mans so it gives you a decent idea as to which teams are strong and who might be positioned to win.

This year, there are a number of strong teams in the hypercar field. Peugeot, Alpine, BMW, Ferrari, Toyota, Cadillac, Aston Martin and Genesis all showed promise, although Genesis has a brand new car and working through the process of dealing with that, I think they were in the points yesterday -- in only their second race.

Ford and McLaren are bringing new hypercar entries to the field next year. It's a good time to be an endurance racing fan.

Spa is a wonderful track. I really enjoy the races there. The first race of the season at Imola was kind of boring compared to Spa, other than watching Toyota dominate on Ferrari's home turf. Most of the teams were able to exhibit the ability to run at the front of the field through the six hours yesterday.

Le Mans will have a number of IMSA LMDh (Le Mans Daytona h) cars in addition to the WEC LMH class cars. I'm glad to see IMSA and WEC were able to find some common ground to allow cars from both series to compete in either. I expect a very large Le Mans field this year.

 

[TSmith8605]

I've been following sports car endurance racing for several years, mostly IMSA in the US, but my attention has tapered off over the last couple of years. I have been to every "local" IMSA race at Laguna Seca (near Monterey, CA) since before American Le Mans and Grand Am merged into the United Sports Car Championship now just IMSA. This includes the race a week ago (May 1 - 3, 2026).

I did manage to get to the Le Mans race in person in 2016, the year Ford showed up with a new version of their Ford GT and took 1st, 2nd and 4th in the GT class (Ferrari took 3rd) - amongst lots of hype related to the original Ford vs. Ferrari story. In that year, Ford fielded two GTs in IMSA and two in the WEC - with all four entered in Le Mans. Corvette also took their 2 IMSA cars to Le Mans as usual for them.

Even though I've never been in person, SPA is one of my favorite race tracks because of the complicated course, the great scenery and the history. I would love to do a track day there but that is a bit too difficult ($$$) for me since I am not on that continent.

Have not been taking many pictures these days so here are some pix from 2016.

April 30, 2016, IMSA race at Laguna Seca, Monterey, CA.





June 18 - 19, 2016, WEC 24-hour race at the Circuit de la Sarthe, Le Mans, France.

 

[TSmith8605]

 

[devnull]

@TSmith8605 Excellent pictures! I've not been to any of the tracks other than an historic race 30 something years ago at Road America. Actually, I'd probably consider going to another historic because of the amazing selection of cars that show up - and you could even stay in the parking lot because of the amazing range of cars found there too!

It looks like you had some fun and got to experience a great race. That was just before Audi and Porsche pulled out of WEC, which left the series pretty thin, although the GTLM classes were still highly competitive with plenty of entries. Then the lean years with Toyota being the only full factory entry. I'm so glad to see participation picking up again.

I somehow managed to completely miss Daytona this year along with Sebring. I'm going to do my best to watch all of the WEC races this year, and as many of the IMSA races as possible. Checking the schedule it seems I've already missed a fair number of IMSA races. But they're available online, so I can catch up.

I haven't been interested in F1 for years. Endurance racing is just more interesting to me.

Anyhow, thanks for adding some nice content to this thread.