WEC start phase in Austin: Kubica leads Ferrari trio

Wild start and Ferrari triple lead at the WEC 6-hour race in Austin, Texas. After the first hour and 27 laps, Robert Kubica, who had started from second position in the private #83 AF Corse Ferrari (Kubica, Shwartzman, Ye), was in the lead. Pole-setter Antonio Giovinazzi in the #51 Ferrari 499P (Pier Guidi, Giovinazzi, Calado) led the start phase until ex-Formula 1 driver Kubica overtook him on lap 19 after just over half an hour.

Behind the two Ferraris, real life raged after the race was released at 1:00 p.m. local time (8:00 p.m. German time): Le Mans winner Miguel Molina in the #50 Ferrari (Fuoco, Molina, Nielsen) was supported by the fights of his front men and improved from fifth to third place. Ferrari decided to follow in the footsteps of its Formula 1 colleagues in the sixth race of the 2024 season: a few hours before the start of the WEC, Charles Leclerc surprisingly won the Italians’ home race in Monza.

Molina was lucky, Ferdinand Habsburg was unlucky: The Austrian in his #36 Alpine A424 (Habsburg, Milesi, Chatin) received a drive-through penalty early on for a collision with Earl Bamber’s #2 Cadillac V-Series.R. The Caddy driver fell from his third starting position to P7, while Habsburg, who had started from P4, was pushed to the back of the field after the mandatory pit stop. On Saturday, Alpine was still happy about the best qualifying result in its WEC debut year… In the #36 Alpine with Mick Schumacher, team-mate Matthieu Vaxiviere got the start, but immediately fell from P13 to 16th.

Pitot tube cover forgotten: Drama about #5 Porsche

Meanwhile, Fred Makowiecki, who started from sixth place in the #5 Porsche 963 (Campbell, Christensen, Makowiecki), experienced a drama. The Frenchman had to come into the pits after the first lap because the Porsche crew had strangely forgotten to remove the green cover on the pitot tube on the roof of the prototype. A rare operator for the team from Zuffenhausen, who leads the World Endurance Championship.

The two BMW M Hybrid V8s from the Munich car manufacturer were able to help out in all the hustle and bustle: the starting drivers Marco Wittmann in the #15 (Dries Vanthoor, Marciello, Wittmann) and Rene Rast in the #20 sister car (Sheldon van der Linde, Rast, Frijns) skilfully stayed out of any drama and finished fourth and fifth. Wittmann had started from P8, his DTM team-mate Rast from P7.

The #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid (Conway, Kobayashi, De Vries) with Mike Conway at the wheel was in sixth place. The Briton prevailed in the early stages in a spectacular three-way battle against the Cadillac and Nico Müller’s #93 Peugeot 9X8. The Swiss driver had to admit defeat to his two opponents after a bombastic start – from P11 to P6 at one point. Stoffel Vandoorne in the sister Peugeot suffered a puncture after a collision with Will Stevens’ Jota Porsche at the start and had to head for the pits.

Lamborghini the secret winner of the start phase

Eighth, ninth and tenth places after the first six hours were occupied by the #12 Jota Porsche with Will Stevens, Nico Müller in the Peugeot and the only LMDh Lamborghini in the field. Edoardo Mortara got off to a flying start in the Italian prototype and stormed from 18th and last place on the grid into the top 10 within a few laps. The world championship leaders Andre Lotterer, Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor in the #6 Porsche only moved up one position from 14th place on the grid.

In the LMGT3 category, pole-setter Ian James led in the #27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 from Heart of Racing ahead of the Lamborghini women’s trio Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey and Michelle Gatting. The #92 Manthey Porsche with starting driver Alexander Malykhin lost one position and fell back to fifth place. The sister car was in twelfth place. The #46 BMW M4 GT3 with superstar Valentino Rossi, with Ahmad Al-Harthy at the wheel, took eighth place, the sister car in tenth position.