Endurance Weekly: April 8th-15th
- DIVEBOMB Endurance Team
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Written by the DIVEBOMB Endurance Team, Edited by Gabriel Tsui
This week on Endurance Weekly, the DIVEBOMB endurance team will be taking a look ahead to the WEC (World Endurance Championship) 6 Hours of Imola, look back at the IMSA Grand Prix of Long Beach and the GTWC EU (GT World Challenge Europe) Paul Ricard 6 Hours and report on all of the breaking news stories from the past week.
FIA WEC - 6 Hours of Imola - Preview
The World Endurance Championship heads to Europe for the first time since last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, for the second round of the 2025 campaign. The six-hour race will start at 1pm local time, Sunday 20th April.
Entering their home circuit, championship leader Ferrari bids to continue its title quest in front of the Tifosi. After monopolizing the podium at the season opener in Qatar last month, the Italian marque hopes to repeat the stunning result in Imola.
The usual 18 Hypercars and 18 LMGT3 cars will grace the 4.9km (3 mile) Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari track.
The only change for this round’s driver line-up is Esteban Masson replacing Ben Barnicoat due to injury, as reported in the previous edition of Endurance Weekly.
IMSA - Grand Prix of Long Beach - Review - Read the full report here
The No.7 Porsche Penske motorsport GTP, driven by Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy, took their third win in three races on Saturday, in the IMSA Grand Prix of Long Beach, with a Porsche 1-2 alongside the No.6 car of Matt Campbell and Mattieu Jaminet.
The race started at 5:05pm local time, where Dries Vanthoor in the No.24 BMW led away from pole position, after taking his third pole in three races. Down into turn one, the two Porsches almost collided, with the No.6 getting caught out by the incident and dropping behind Nick Yelloly in the No.93 Acura.
The two would battle for third, resulting in the Acura picking up damage and having to come into the pits for repairs.
The first FCY (Full Course Yellow) came out 20 minutes into the 100 minute race, after the No.13 Corvette was sent into the barriers by the No.78 Lamborghini. All of the GTP teams used this FCY to take their only pit stops in the race. As the cars emerged from the pits, the two Porsches were first and second after some quick pit stops from the Penske crews.
In GTD, a handful of cars stayed out an extra lap than the rest and benefitted, the No.177 ‘Rexy’ Porsche taking the lead, from the Vasser Sullivan Lexus pairing - No.12 ahead of No.89.
The orders in both classes stayed relatively the same, despite a second FCY for an incident between the No.85 JDC Miller Porsche GTP and the No.27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin GTD.
The No.7 Porsche took the win from the sister No.6 in GTP, with the pole sitting No.24 BMW managing a third place finish.
In GTD, it was the No.177 AO Racing ‘Rexy’ Porsche taking the chequered flag in first, ahead of the Lexus pairing with No.12 in second, No.89 in third.
The IMSA grid will return to racing for the endurance cup round at Laguna Seca on the 11th of May.
Race Results
1st No.7 Porsche - Nasr, Tandy
2nd No.6 Porsche - Campbell, Jaminet
3rd No.24 BMW - Eng, Vanthoor
4th No.31 Cadillac - Bamber, Aitken
5th No.25 BMW - Wittman, Van Der Linde
GTWC EU - Paul Ricard 6 Hours - Review - Read the full report here
BMW Team WRT No.32 driven by Charles Weerts, Ugo De Wilde and Kelvin Van Der Linde won the GTWC (GT World Challenge) season opener in the darkness at Paul Ricard after six hours of racing on Saturday evening.
The race began at 6pm local time, with the No.48 Mercedes driven by Maro Engel leading the way from Mirko Bortolotti in the No.63 Lamborghini, who overtook Jules Gounon in the No.17 Mercedes for second.
Early on in the first two stints, No.58 driver Dean MacDonald went on a charge in his Gold class McLaren to the front of the overall field, and began to pull a gap out in front of all of the Pro class cars.
Meanwhile the sister No.59 McLaren had an issue, pulling to the side of the road on the 1.8km Mistral straight with a mechanical failure. This brought out the first FCY of the race, but did not require a full safety car so the field was not bunched up again.
Not too long after the first FCY, the second would follow. The No.5 Optimum McLaren was the culprit this time, yet another mechanical failure for a McLaren 720S GT3. During the FCY, many of the leading group pitted, except the top four who were already past the pit lane when the FCY was called. Due to it being a short caution, they didn’t get another chance to pit.
When MacDonald in the No.58 and Engel in the No.48 had finally come into the pits, they had been jumped by the No.22 and No.96 Porsches, who led the race at that point in a 1-2 for the German marque.
That wouldn’t be for long however, as MacDonald in the McLaren charged back and took the lead once again, and began to pull out a gap in the lead of the race. In the next round of pit stops, MacDonald handed over to Louis Prette, who lost the lead to Alessio Picariello at the wheel of the No.96 Rutronik Porsche.
Prette began to slowly creep back down the order in his stint, as Charles Weerts in the No.32 WRT BMW went up into second place. The No.32 then chased after the No.96, and after stints from Weerts and Ugo De Wilde, the BMW eventually led the race and didn’t look back.
There was three further FCYs for the No.54 Porsche, No.30 BMW and No.333 Lamborghini all stopping with mechanical failures, but Van Der Linde in the leading No.32 BMW was unphased,as he went on to bring the WRT BMW home to win the 6 Hours of Paul Ricard.
Race Results
1st No.32 WRT BMW - Weerts, De Wilde, Van Der Linde
2nd No.96 Rutronik, Porsche - Müller, Picariello, Neiderhauser
3rd No.22 Schumacher CLRT, Porsche - Güven, Heinrich, Bachler
4th No.48 Mann Filter, Mercedes - Engel, Auer, Cairoli
5th No.7 ComToYou, Aston Martin - Drudi, Thiim, Sørensen
Breaking News
McLaren to join the WEC Hypercar class in 2027 - Read the full report here
McLaren are making their return to top class prototype racing at Le Mans for 2027, more than thirty years after the McLaren F1’s legendary win at the endurance classic.
The announcement came after several years of extensive deliberation, with the first rumors of McLaren’s interest in the WEC’s top class dating back to 2017 in the form of an LMH project based on a road legal production car.
Over the following years, the team has reportedly been close to committing to a program at several points, though the final decision only came recently after the current Hypercar regulations were extended until at least 2029.
The British team’s racer will likely be based on the existing Dallara LMDh chassis that is also used by both BMW and Cadillac in their respective LMDh challengers, though no technical details have been confirmed officially.
McLaren is not the only manufacturer working on joining the already stacked Hypercar field, as Genesis and Ford have already announced their plans to enter the WEC by 2026 and 2027 respectively.
Porsche to launch GT3 Evo in 2026 - Read the full report here
Porsche motorsport announced on Monday that they would be launching an Evo version of their current GT3 model. An official launch is expected sometime in the Summer, with a full customer rollout beginning in 2026.
The new car will make its debut at this weekend's 24H Series race at Spa, with factory drivers Laurin Heinrich, Alfred Renauer and Ralf Bohn taking to the wheel of the new car, run by Herberth Motorsport.
You can see the new Porsche 992 911 GT3 R Evo in action at 12:50 local time on Saturday and 10:50 local time on Sunday.
Rossi Returns to the GT World Challenge - Read the full report here
Valentino Rossi returns to the GT World Challenge Europe for a one-off appearance at the Misano sprint round. The MotoGP legend will share Team WRT’s no.46 with BMW factory driver Rafaello Marciello.
Misano is a home track for Rossi, having raced there for years in MotoGP and winning his class in the GTWC rounds in both 2023 and 2024.
Following his retirement from MotoGP, Rossi has contested the full GTWC season three times already, all with WRT, but he has decided not to participate this year in order to focus on his WEC LMGT3 campaign.
Lilou Wadoux to contest full ELMS and IMSA endurance cup season after late switch from SuperGT
Lilou Wadoux will not be competing in Super GT this year, with Takuro Shinohara assuming her seat in the PONOS Racing Ferrari instead. The Ferrari factory driver had been signed to contest the entire Super GT season with PONOS Racing, with whom she had already completed the pre-season test.
The late driver swap reportedly came at the request of Wadoux herself. The French driver will now be focusing on her full-season LMGT3 campaign in the European Le Mans Series, as well as an LMP2 drive in IMSA’s endurance rounds this season, both with AF Corse.
Scheduling conflicts with the Super GT calendar would have forced Wadoux to miss several of these races, but without her campaign in Japan, Wadoux will now be able to compete in every round of her European and American campaigns.
Last year Wadoux completed the full season in the PONOS Ferrari alongside Kei Cozzolino, during which she became the first woman in nearly 30 years to finish on the podium in a Super GT race.
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