No. 6 Porsche wins wet and wild Lone Star Le Mans at COTA

Porsche Penske Motorsport's No. 6 963 of Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell claimed its first victory of the 2025 FIA WEC season Sunday at COTA in a wet and wild edition of Lone Star Le Mans.

The race started under safety car and showers throughout caused incidents and interruptions to the action. There were six safety cars for over two hours, a 42-minute red flag and a smattering of full-course yellows and virtual safety cars. It meant that in the end, there were just two and a half hours of green flag running.

Estre was behind the wheel when the No. 6, which started third, came to the fore. The Frenchman snatched the lead at Turn 1 on a restart with just under two hours remaining from Alessandro Pier Guidi in the No. 51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P.

The No. 51 controlled the middle portion of the race after Phil Hanson in the pole-sitting No. 83 privately-entered 499P let James Calado through to the lead on the pit straight in the third hour. It was a strategic move to enable the No. 51 – the faster of the two cars in the tough conditions – to pull away and prevent the No. 6 Porsche from joining the lead battle after the early red flag.

It was a stoppage called in part due to the weather and in part due to a mix-up during a safety car swap that saw much of the Hypercar field incorrectly follow the leading safety car (that was running low on fuel) through the pit lane. A miscommunication from race control caused the confusion and jumbled the order, forcing the race director to reorder the field before restarting the race.

But the No. 51's time out front wouldn't last. Pier Guidi, after being passed at Turn 1 by Estre, suffered a front-left puncture, believed to have been caused by contact between the two cars. It dropped the car down the order, outside the top 10 and forced the championship leaders to fight their way back to the front. The stewards deemed it a racing incident. Ferrari agreed, though Giuliano Salvi,  Ferrari's race and test team manager, argued that the contact wouldn’t have happened had Estre not tagged the No. 51 at the final corner and been positioned to make a dive at Turn 1 as a result.

In the end, the No. 51 finished fifth, behind the No. 50 sister car that took second and the two Peugeots that finished third and fourth. The No. 83, meanwhile, finished seventh after the car was handed a five-second pit time penalty for a stop infringement and later drove through the pit lane when the team incorrectly suspected that the car had a puncture. It was Porsche's day.

“It's been a challenging season so far, but the rain can be a great equalizer as we saw today,” Penske Racing president Jonathan Diuguid said in summary post-race.

“I think the execution by the drivers and those on the timing stand put them in a position to do what they do best, and once Kevin (Estre) got up front, I was pretty pumped to be honest because I think when he gets those positions, he executes every day.

“So it's all about seizing the opportunities when they come and that's what we were able to do today.

“I can say thanks to some of our competitors because they tried it out for us and we get to see the actual data, we considered using car #5 to put slick on as well but I think the #7 Toyota had four or five laps and we could see the cold warm up time and just chose to do the last seven or eight laps on the wets we had there.

“Also, we had the advantage of stopping one lap later than our direct competitors, so we could see the decisions they made. At that point, it was relatively easy to make the right decision and just bring it home to the finish."

In championship terms, after reducing the gap with the point for pole to 11 points yesterday, the No. 83 crew are now 15 points back from the No. 51 drivers with just two races remaining. Full season No. 6 Porsche drivers Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor, meanwhile, are up to third, 36 points adrift. It was a disappointing final result for the factory team, but all things considered, it wasn't damaging for the championship.

Miguel Molina was the hero for the No. 50 crew, making a late move in the dying minutes on Peugeot's No. 94 9X8 of Stoffel Vandoorne to secure second. The No. 93 ended up fourth despite starting at the back of the field and being handed an early drive-through for exiting the pit lane while it was closed.

Outside the top five, the JOTA Cadillacs battled their way into the points after starting at the rear of the field. The No. 38 V-Series.R, which required a windscreen wiper replacement, took sixth, with the No. 12 sister car eighth.

James Moy/Getty Images

“We got unlucky yesterday, so I'll take it today,” No. 38 driver Jenson Button said. ‘The car was fun to drive and I enjoyed it. It was a whole race of looking after the tires, fuel saving and getting just everything to the end, really. And it worked out well.”

Three cars retired from the race in Hypercar. The No. 20 WRT BMW, which had a hybrid system failure that forced Rene Rast to abandon the car in the opening hour, and the two Aston Martin Valkyries. The Heart of Racing team showed encouraging signs in terms of pace but suffered terminal mechanical woes caused by “overheating” after 102 and 106 laps.

The No. 36 Alpine and No. 7 Toyota may have also finished high up the order, but the former aquaplaned off into the barriers and the latter dropped off the lead lap after getting stuck in the gravel.

In LMGT3, it was heartbreak for Proton Competition and Vista AF Corse and jubilation for United Autosports. The No. 95 McLaren GT3 Evo of Marino Sato, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung (above) crossed the line second behind the No. 54 Ferrari before the team received a five-second time penalty post-race for an incident at Turn 11 with the No. 77 Proton Ford Mustang.

The No. 77 crew looked on course to score the Blue Oval its first WEC win after the team locked out the front row on Saturday, until tire strategy came into play in the final hour.

Cars that took the Goodyear slick tires at their final stop suddenly found pace on the drying track. Davide Rigon, on slicks in the No. 54 Ferrari, made short work of Alessio Rovera in the No. 21 sister Ferrari, Richard Lietz in the No. 92 points-leading Manthey Porsche and Ben Barker in the No. 77 Ford, making what he thought was the winning move up the inside at Turn 12.

Sato, meanwhile, found himself on the right tire at the right time for United Autosports, rising to second in the No. 95 McLaren before being promoted to first post-race.  It would result in McLaren's first-ever FIA WEC class victory and United’s first WEC win in LMGT3.

“Marino did everything; he brought it home. It’s a testament to how hard we work,” Gelael said post-race. 

Luckily, I wasn’t the first on slicks, but I was communicating with the team in the garage about tire choice. In the end, we made the right choice. The first few laps were tricky, but we made it work,” Sato added.

The No. 46 WRT BMW came from seemingly nowhere and ended up second following a heroic run from Kelvin van der Linde.

Meanwhile, the No. 54 dropped to third with its time penalty, and the No. 77 Ford dropped to seventh. The No. 92 Porsche fell to eighth, and the No. 21 Ferrari finished outside the points in 12th.

Just how much of an impact will the No. 92’s strategic blunder on tires have on the title battle? On a day in which the team’s two rivals from Vista AF Corse and TF Sport finished outside the points (the former retiring after several setbacks and the latter also losing out on tire choice), finishing eighth, a podium was on the table, and it was a missed opportunity. 

Ryan Hardwick, Richard Lietz and Riccardo Pera did extend their lead in the Drivers’ Championship, though, to 19 points with the 6 Hours of Fuji on the horizon.

The penultimate round of the season in Japan is set to get underway on September 28th.

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