***After an eight-week summer break, the FIA World Endurance Championship returns to action this weekend at Circuit of The Americas for the Lone Star Le Mans event. It marks the series’ 15th trip to North America and the 75th six-hour race and 40th contest featuring the Hypercar category.
***COTA has been home to the closest overall finish in green-flag conditions, in what was a team orders-inflicted result for the pair of Porsche 919 Hybrids, with Earl Bamber crossing the line 0.276 seconds ahead of Nick Tandy in 2017.
***Last year’s race at the 20-turn, 3.426-mile circuit marked the closest finish in LMGT3 history, with a five-second post-race time penalty for the then class-leading Davide Rigon giving the win to the No. 95 United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3, which finished just 0.256 seconds ahead of the second-placed No. 46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO.
***The 2025 overall winners, Porsche Penske Motorsport, is not present this weekend in the wake of the German manufacturer’s withdrawal from the Hypercar class at the end of last year. The COTA win for Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Matt Campbell was the most recent with the Porsche 963 in the WEC.
***All three of its drivers are expected to be on the WEC Hypercar grid next year in competing teams, with Vanthoor and Campbell already confirmed at McLaren United AS and Ford Racing, respectively, and Estre linked to be replacing Mike Conway at Toyota Racing.
***Alpine drivers Charles Milesi, Fred Makowiecki and Victor Martins, plus Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA pilot Sebastien Bourdais all visited Johnson Space Center in Houston on Wednesday, courtesy of the WEC, getting a behind-the-scenes look at the NASA facility and the famous mission control center.
***A number of drivers are arriving straight from an IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship test at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, including Cadillac drivers Earl Bamber, Jack Aitken and Ricky Taylor, plus Jonny Edgar and Paul Di Resta. Both BMW’s Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor took part in Wednesday’s running, with Philipp Eng and Marco Wittmann completing the test on Thursday.
***Aitken told Sportscar365 that it was a good chance to “shake off the cobwebs a bit” with no Hypercar/GTP racing having occurred in August. “It’s nice because we had a month off, basically, with August being a bit of a break,” he said. “So you can refresh yourself a little bit, get back into the swing of it at a track we know really well (Road Atlanta). It was a good test day; it ran smoothly.”
***Action Express Racing technical director Iain Watt is on-site this weekend, supporting the two-car JOTA effort as part of Cadillac’s ‘One Team’ approach.
***The Cadillac V-ONE Concept, which was unveiled at Monterey Car Week last month, was on display in the pit lane on Thursday afternoon. The track day prototype, based on the Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh car and was co-developed by Cadillac Design, Cadillac Racing and Dallara.
***Extreme heat is set to play a factor this weekend, with ambient temperatures soaring past 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) today, and forecasts calling for similar weather for the rest of the weekend. Last year’s event, which had similar heat-waves, was rain-impacted in the race.
***Both of the Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyries are the only entries in the 35-car field with two-driver lineups, with the American team electing not to bring in its WeatherTech Championship pilots Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis, as thirds, as is the case for the 24 Hours of Le Mans and races eight hours or longer.
***Several teams tested at COTA in the run-up to the event, including Toyota and Genesis Magma Racing, with the Korean manufacturer set for its first race on U.S. soil with its ORECA-chassied GMR-001. Genesis completed two days of testing in late July, in what marked Mathys Jaubert’s first-ever laps of the track. Its five other drivers all have previous race experience from WEC races.
***Lotterer said: “The test at COTA was really valuable for us. Having the opportunity to run there before the race weekend allowed us to understand the track better with the GMR-001 Hypercar and work through a number of different set-up directions. COTA is quite a demanding circuit, with a great mix of high-speed sections, technical corners and some big braking zones, so there is a lot to get right.”
***Toyota’s technical director David Floury added that the test was particularly useful as parts of the track have been resurfaced. He told Sportscar365: “The bumpiness on this track is changing from one year to the next because the ground is not very stable so every year you discover new features. It was good to test and we are reasonably prepared and now we need to execute better than we did in Brazil.”
***Two new WEC Hypercar contenders that are set for 2027 race debuts completed milestone tests in the last month, with Ford having a rollout and 1000km of running at Paul Ricard with its yet-to-be-named LMDh car. The first test on Aug. 17, coincidently, came on the 60th anniversary of Ken Miles’ death, which came at Riverside while testing an experimental Ford prototype.
***McLaren United AS, meanwhile, undertook a 30-hour endurance test with its MCL-HY LMDh car at Motorland Aragon. The car turned its first laps at Varano in May.
***The British manufacturer, which has so far officially confirmed Mikkel Jensen and Laurens Vanthoor, is believed to have also secured both Alex Lynn and Malthe Jakobsen, but has not yet have internally confirmed its final two drivers according to team principal James Barclay.
***Sportscar365 believes that McLaren is waiting on confirmation of the 2027 F1 and NTT IndyCar Series schedules to evaluate the possibility of including a driver or two from its other programs. Newly signed Arrow McLaren IndyCar pilot Scott Dixon could get the nod to contest Le Mans, with reigning F1 champion Lando Norris apparently not completely ruled out of discussions if there is no Grand Prix that weekend.
***When asked by Sportscar365 about the lineup, Barclay said: “We’ve left some optionality before we lock those decisions down because we have time. We have a fantastic core group of drivers that we’re super excited about and then we also have some seats we wanted to leave open for longer while we have chance to do some wider assessments so we don’t need to rush that decision – we want to get the right lineup and we’ve got a great group of drivers supporting our test program and out of that we will make choices.”
***COTA marked the first class pole for the Ford Mustang GT3 in WEC LMGT3 competition when Gianmmaro Levorato claimed the brand’s maiden Hyperpole last year.
<p***Levorato said: “The motivation is extremely high as this will be the home race for Ford Racing, and our Ford Mustang GT3 showed really strong pace at the last round in Sao Paulo. COTA is a track I really enjoy, and it holds a special memory for me after taking the Ford Mustang’s first ever pole position in WEC there last year. We’ll give our best and hopefully put on a great show for our home fans.”
***Both Eduardo Barrichello and Nicky Catsburg return to WEC action after missing the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo due to their full-season WeatherTech Championship commitments with Heart of Racing and Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports, respectively.
***It has meant Catsburg is now highly unlikely to win the LMGT3 class title, as all three of TF Sport’s No. 33 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R drivers are on separate points, led by solo points leader Jonny Edgar.
***Catsburg said: “The result in Brazil means I can’t win the championship anymore but I kind of knew that was going to be the situation. We saw that coming so for Jonny it was important to score some points. But the goal is always to win the championship. Even though it might be just Jonny, we’ve all done it together – with Nico’s [Varrone] help and also with Blake’s [McDonald] help.”
***The Dutchman, who is driving a 2027 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport as his road car this weekend, has an “absolutely crazy” five-week stretch ahead, as Catsburg won’t return home until after the WeatherTech Championship season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans on Oct. 3.
***Catsburg arrived in Austin on Tuesday to spend time with Ben Keating and will head straight to Japan following Sunday’s race for next weekend’s Suzuka 1000km before flying back Stateside for the IMSA Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then back to Japan for the 6 Hours of Fuji and then to Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta for the ten-hour WeatherTech Championship enduro.
***Katech Engineering co-founder John F. “Fritz” Kayl died earlier this week at the age of 80. As its longtime CEO and technical director, Kayl’s company built GM-based powerplants for a wide range of motorsports applications, including IROC, Trans-Am, NASCAR, as well as the Chevrolet Corvette C5-R and GT1-spec C6.R race cars that achieved success in sports car racing competitions around the world.
***Friday’s track action at COTA will include two Free Practice sessions, from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-5:30 p.m. CST, along with practice for the season-ending Mustang Challenge North America rounds and practice and qualifying for Radical Cup North America’s triple-header season finale.
Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report
