Argomenti trattati
The World Endurance Championship produced a dramatic qualifying climax at Imola when Antonio Giovinazzi grabbed pole for Ferrari with a last-moment effort. The Italian driver stopped the clocks at 1m30.127s in the #51 Ferrari 499P, leapfrogging Ryo Hirakawa in the #8 Toyota TR010 by a razor-thin margin of 0.011 seconds. That final push came at the close of the ten-minute Hyperpole session — a high-stakes, short-format shootout that decides the top starters — and it reshuffled the expected running order for the weekend.
Giovinazzi not only repeated his strong form from last year but did so in a session that highlighted how close the manufacturers are at the front. The sister AF Corse Ferrari, the #50, put in a lap of 1m30.167s with Antonio Fuoco earlier in qualifying to sit third on the grid, while Peugeot joined the tight pack with Malthe Jakobsen’s 1m30.200s. Overall, four cars were separated by less than four hundredths of a second, underlining the tiny performance differentials among the top Hypercar entries.
How the front order fell into place
The battle for the leading positions read like a who’s who of endurance racing. Hirakawa’s provisional top time of 1m30.138s in the #8 Toyota was enough to lead until Giovinazzi’s final flyer, with Norman Nato taking fifth for Cadillac and the Jota-run effort in the #12 posting 1m30.419s. The second Toyota, the #7 with Nyck de Vries at the wheel, ended up sixth after de Vries turned a 1m30.432s. Alpine’s #35 with Charles Milesi completed the immediate chasing pack in seventh, ahead of the satellite Ferrari driven by Robert Kubica.
Notable top-10 entries
The remaining top-ten slots included both WRT-run BMW M Hybrid V8 entries, driven by Robin Frijns and Kevin Magnussen, who brought the German marque into the mix. Several familiar names and teams sat just outside the top positions: Aston Martin’s Valkyrie LMH cars campaigned by The Heart of Racing failed to make Hyperpole, with Harry Tincknell missing the cut in the #007 by under two tenths. Meanwhile, the new Genesis GMR-001 entries, driven by Mathieu Jaminet and André Lotterer, anchored the timing screens in the early session; Jaminet ended roughly 1.7s off Fuoco’s best lap in the initial qualifying stint.
GT drama and key incidents
In the LMGT3 category, rookie Thomas Fleming delivered a standout performance for Garage 59, taking pole on his series debut in the #10 McLaren 720S Evo with a lap of 1m41.181s. He led most of the Hyperpole session and held off the #78 Lexus RC F GT3 piloted by Hadrien David, who posted 1m41.407s. The third grid slot went to Clemens Schmid in the second Auto Sport Promotion Lexus. The GT shootout was interrupted by a red flag as a spin from Salih Yoluc in the TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R brought the session to a halt just before the chequered flag.
Earlier in the qualifying running, race returnee Peter Dempsey had topped the bronze-driver segment in the #34 Corvette, showing strong pace ahead of the race. These GT storylines sit alongside the Hypercar headlines and will shape the classes when the grid rolls away.
Imola as a proving ground and the weekend timetable
The Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari demands a well-balanced package: its 4.909km anticlockwise layout is bumpy, narrow and features a mix of high-speed straights and slower turns that stress suspension, traction and kerb-riding ability. Organizers note that Hypercar crews can reach almost 315km/h on the long runs, execute around 42 gear changes per lap and spend about two-thirds of the circuit at full throttle — a combination that rewards aerodynamic load and chassis compliance while punishing mistakes due to minimal runoff areas.
Event schedule and context
This edition of the Imola 6 Hours opened the 2026 WEC campaign after the Qatar round was postponed; the week also included a Prologue test day earlier in the program. Official track action followed a compact timetable: the Prologue took place on April 14, with track sessions from April 17 and qualifying — and the Hyperpole top-ten shootouts — on April 18. The six-hour race is scheduled to begin at 13:00 local time on Sunday, April 19. With manufacturers like Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot, BMW and newcomers such as Genesis all vying for early-season form, the Imola weekend has set up an intriguing title battle as the WEC season unfolds.