Fifty wins in one hundred starts. That is not a statistic you stumble into. That is a machine built for dominance, and on Sunday at Imola, Toyota reminded every hypercar manufacturer on the grid exactly who sets the standard in the World Endurance Championship.
The No. 8 Toyota TR010 of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, and Ryo Hirakawa crossed the line 13.352 seconds clear of Antonio Giovinazzi’s pole-sitting No. 51 Ferrari 499P to win the 6 Hours of Imola and open the 2026 WEC season with a statement. The No. 7 Toyota completed the podium in third.
It was the first race for the rechristened TR010, formerly the GR010, after Toyota quietly shed the Gazoo Racing branding this offseason. The name changed. The results did not.
Hirakawa set the tone in Saturday qualifying, nearly snatching pole before Giovinazzi’s late flyer gave Ferrari the top spot. But grid position meant little once the lights went green. After the halfway mark, the No. 8 ran unchallenged at the front, save for pit cycles, and Toyota’s strategists played the rest of the field like a fiddle.
The key moment came when the No. 8 crew opted for no tire changes on a critical pit stop while Ferrari took two, just before a virtual safety car triggered by the No. 93 Peugeot compressed the field. Toyota won the race on pit road before the safety car handed them an even bigger cushion.
“We didn’t actually expect that,” Hartley said of Hirakawa’s qualifying lap. “He pulled the lap out of nowhere.” The team then executed what Hartley called “a bit of team play,” with the No. 7 sister car running long to hold up the Ferrari and build margin for the No. 8. Textbook Toyota. Ruthless, coordinated, effective.
Ferrari came to Imola as defending champions and left as runners-up on home soil. The No. 50 Ferrari fared worse, picking up a drive-through penalty that dropped it to sixth. Meanwhile, the No. 12 Cadillac V-Series.R, which ran competitively early, suffered the same penalty and tumbled to 13th.
Alpine’s No. 35 A424 was the best of the rest in fourth, with Charles Milesi fending off Rene Rast’s No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 late. The two BMW entries split fifth and seventh. Peugeot, which qualified fourth with the No. 94, hemorrhaged positions all afternoon and finished a pointless 12th.
The LMGT3 class delivered its own drama. Garage 59’s No. 10 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo dominated for five and a half hours before a blown alternator with 30 minutes remaining sent it behind the wall. Daniel Harper inherited the lead for the No. 69 WRT BMW M4 GT3 Evo and held off Nicky Catsburg’s No. 33 TF Sport Corvette, who received a late reprimand but no time penalty.
The No. 92 Manthey Porsche rounded out the GT podium sixteen seconds further back.
The Qatar round that was supposed to open the season was cancelled, handing Imola the curtain-raiser. It could not have produced a cleaner narrative for Toyota. A new name on the car, a milestone victory, and a lockout of the podium’s top and bottom steps against a Ferrari team defending its crown on Italian asphalt.
A 50 percent win rate across 100 races is the kind of number that belongs in a dynasty conversation, not just a season preview. BMW, Peugeot, Cadillac, and both Genesis entries are still searching for the combination to crack Toyota’s code. Ferrari got closest and still lost by thirteen seconds.
The circus moves to Spa-Francorchamps next month. Toyota arrives with the target firmly on its back, exactly where it has been for the better part of a decade.
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