A month on from the thrilling 92nd edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours, the FIA World Endurance Championship teams find themselves at Interlagos for the championships’ first venture to Brazil in a decade.
Looking back at footage and images of the 2014 edition of the 6 Hours of São Paulo presents a stark contrast. That weekend featured nine-time Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen’s swansong with Audi, the first win for Porsche with the 919 and Toyota’s first title with the TS040.
But this weekend isn’t about the past, it’s about the future, and the title battles in Hypercar are red hot with four races to go.
In the top category, it’s Porsche vs Ferrari vs Toyota in the Hypercar manufacturers’ championship race. Porsche leads Ferrari by just nine points, with Toyota just three points further adrift.
The drivers’ standings are tight too. Porsche’s No. 6 trio of Kevin Estre, Andre Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor hold a slim nine-point lead this weekend. A fourth-place finish at Le Mans ensured they held station at the top of the table, but the result didn’t match their ambition after such a promising run for the 963 through the opening races of the season.
“This is a really challenging track, and is going to make for a challenging weekend for us,” Lotterer said. “It’s very abrasive, so managing tires during a stint will be tricky. But we must work through it and score points. You come here to do the best you can and hopefully, you have a package that can win.”
The No. 6 trio’s closest challengers come from the Ferrari camp, with the Le Mans winners in the No. 50 — Nicklas Nielsen, Miguel Molina and Antonio Fuoco — second in the standings after scoring 50 points at La Sarthe.
Ferrari hopes that despite the BoP-enforced 17 kg weight increase to its 499Ps for this weekend, it will benefit from a momentum boost generated by the Le Mans win, and gains from its new evo “Joker” (brake cooling and aero) upgrades that are being debuted this weekend.
While Nielsen feels the changes to the car will make the most difference at Fuji (a circuit which is tough on brakes), he is confident that it will have a positive impact at every circuit on the calendar.
“Now the focus is on the championship — we are still excited about Le Mans but we are now just nine points behind and we will try to make things closer this weekend,” he told RACER.
“This weekend is our first true test for the update with other cars on track. Testing alone and then running with other cars is always different, but I am confident it will work well. Our car has worked well at every track this year, and I believe we will be strong again here.”
Toyota and Hertz Team JOTA also have cars in this fight and are looking to reduce the gap in the points ahead of Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of The Americas on Sept. 1.
The No. 7 Toyota, which won at Imola and finished second at Le Mans, is now 17 points back in the standings and all eyes are on its driver crew. The band of Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway is back together after a biking incident forced Conway to withdraw from Le Mans on short notice.
The British veteran’s absence in France — where he was replaced by Jose Maria Lopez — means he is now out of the title race as his teammates scored points and he didn’t, but that will not affect his commitment to the cause. He’s a fighter, and according to the project leader at Toyota Motorsport GmbH John Litjens, is ready to go.
“Mike would not be here (if he wasn’t fit enough),” he told the media. “If something happened anyway, we would have the option to run with two drivers,” noting that you can race with two Hypercar drivers in a six-hour WEC race.
“His healing process went on and on — he had regular checks and he was in the simulator last week to get him back in the rhythm again. The doctors here from the WEC did additional checks here too and he passed them, so we don’t expect any issues.”
If Toyota can rediscover the consistency that won the No. 8 the title in 2023, then the No. 7 could emerge as the championship-winning car for the first time since 2021.
What about JOTA’s No. 12 Porsche, which became a surprise contender after its shock win at Spa? Le Mans didn’t produce another head-turning result, but it did showcase the grit and determination that the British team possesses. The full rebuild of the car ahead of the race following Callum Ilott’s shunt in night practice was nothing short of remarkable and will form a part of the event’s folklore for decades to come. Here in Brazil the No. 12 crew return with the same chassis used for the race at Le Mans, which all being well, will be used for the remainder of the season.
Eighth place at Le Mans saw the full-season duo of Will Stevens and Ilott drop to fourth and 39 points off the lead. Winning the title from here by no means is not impossible, but it is improbable.
“To go through Le Mans with no mechanical issues and finish the race, from where we were, was unbelievable and a real achievement,” Stevens told RACER. “But, going into race week we hoped for more than P8.
“What’s important though in this championship is maximizing what you can get and I honestly think the pace we had in the race reflects where we finished. We know Le Mans can make for a huge swing in the championship fight if you have a good or bad result and we could have come away with no points.
“We are still P4 and we are going one weekend at a time. We are not looking at the championship, we are just looking to get the best out of each event. If we want to be fighting in the top three we need to be attacking and gaining points on those in front of us, so the mentality is to take things race-by-race.”
JOTA is fighting on two fronts, though. While not as important or prestigious, the FIA WEC World Cup for privateer Hypercar teams is still there for the taking. The No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari’s retirement while fighting for the win at Le Mans did serious damage to its hopes for that title and has seen it drop to third behind the No. 99 Proton Porsche. JOTA’s No. 12 crew now leads by a huge 57-point margin.
With all the teams working from a blank sheet of paper at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace — and some forecasts predicting rain at various intervals over the next two days — this weekend’s race could prove to be pivotal. Grab yourself a bucket of popcorn because we have a proper multi-car, multi-brand title fight to look forward to; it’s game on in South America.