The Grand Prix of Endurance is back, the City of Le Mans preparing to become motorsport’s ultimate battleground for the 94th time. Having defeated the defacto Kings of Le Mans and banished Porsche to the USA, Ferrari seek a fourth consecutive crown for the first time since 1964. Yet with the field having closed the performance gap and arriving hungrier than ever, it will be no easy task for the Scuderia – but it never has. Who will emerge from the Porsche curves at 4.00pm on Sunday? It’s time for the oldest endurance test of them all to begin… 

Hypercar

After the first two hours of the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota have strategized their way to the race lead. The #8 currently heads the field running on an off-kilter strategy ahead of the #20 BMW, #35 Alpine and #38 Cadillac that are all running on schedule, while the pole sitting #15 has plummeted to 10th after the first couple of hours.

Having taken pole on Thursday it was a BMW that led the 62-car strong field away from the Ford Chicanes to start the 94th Grand Prix of Endurance, with Kevin Magnussen holding the honours, alongside him the #12 JOTA Cadillac of the man who took pole last year, Will Stevens.

Rene Rast in the sister #20 was the man who led the first lap after getting past both the #12 and #38 throughout the first half maiden lap after a frantic start, with the top two breaking away at over a second per lap, leaving Magnussen to battle the Ferdinand Habsburg’s #36 and the #38 and #101 Cadillacs.

Toyota were first to pit amongst the hypercars, the #7 peeling into its box for a fuel top up just 30min into the race, putting it far-off strategy as Rast increased his lead to 8sec over the #12, and Magnussen had fallen to sixth in the #15. The sister #8 came in a lap later, meaning both cars were allowed to run in as free air as a car can get at Le Mans.

On 43 minutes the rest of the Hypercars came in, allowing both Toyotas to rise up the order. Sebastian Buemi thus took the race lead, while Mike Conway was stuck in fifth, both cars having taken a fresh set of tires. The #35 Alpine now moved up to third with Earl Bamber up to fourth from tenth on the grid in the #38.

At the end of the first hour, #8 led from #20 with Alpine’s #35 in third, #38 and the sister #7 completing the top five, as the pole-sitting #20 was now ninth.

Le Mans debutants Genesis had a quiet first hour, but still ran just under 35sec behind the overall leading Toyota, in thirteenth and fourteenth respectively, #19 ahead of #17.

With Rast having stormed ahead in the first hour, Ferdinand Habsburg was now in the #35 having relieved Charles Milesi and caught the #20 through pace and traffic combined but the French car pitted two laps earlier, having used significantly more energy in doing so. Also in for the second round of Hypercar stops were the #38 and #50 Ferrari, with the sister cars going longer on their stints. Across both Hypercar and LMP2, everyone was triple-stinging their tyres.

LMP2

Two hours done and in LMP2 meanwhile Job Van Uitert has led the majority of the class so far in the #28, despite being hounded by Julien Andlauer’s #30 for much of the race thus far. Third is the #43 of Inter Europol having risen throughout the race while the #29 that had been running strongly is now sitting sixth.

Job Van Uitert and Esteban Masson led the field away for the 24 Hours, with the #28 of IDEC Sport heading the field after the first lap from Julien Andlauer’s #30, who fought for the lead in the opening stint with Alex Quinn’s #4 Crowdstrike entry in their mirrors all the way.

After 34 minutes the first round of stops came, with the #28 and #30 pitting on alternate laps, the former adopting for an undercut that saw it extend its advantage. The #04 stayed third with the #29 of Forestier Racing By Panis jumping to second and Dane Cameron moving up to fourth in the #99, this year named “Rockie” and styled after a Pegasus. Duqueine proved the biggest losers from staying out, dropping to fifth with the #30 now with extra impotus to climb back up the order.

The first penalties came to the #29 and #14 of TDS, five seconds added to their second stops for breaching start procedure.

With the first hour complete, the #28 still led from pole with the #29 and #30 giving chase, the top five completed by the #14 and Le Mans rookie Jack Doohan’s #24.

On the second stops Andlauer went a lap longer again, joined by Dane Cameron’s #99 and Jack Doohan’s #24.

The first car to fall off the lead lap was the Felbermayr father-son #44 of Proton Competition

LMGT3

In LMGT3, Lexus have capitalised on a strong build up to the race, with Tom Van Rompuy leading in the #78 ahead of Dan Harper’s #69 BMW and the #77 Ford, while the sister car has hit trouble early on.

In LMGT3 Mattia Drudi’s reward for pole was starting the #23 Aston Martin Vantage Evo, alongside Francois Heriau in the #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo. Drudi held the lead after the first lap from both Lexus RCF GT3s, the #87 of Clemens Schmid ahead of the sister #78.

Charlie Eastwood tore through the pack in the #34 Racing Team Turkey Corvette, climbing to 12th inside the first twenty minutes having started at the rear of the field.

The first drama of the race went to the #88 Ford Mustang suffered light bodywork damage from contact with another LMGT3 runner, dropping to the back of the pack before race control called the #88 in to repair the damage.

LMGT3 pitstops also saw split strategy, as Jack Hawksworth took the lead briefly by running three laps over his target with the BMW pair, #32 ahead of #69 following him round. Ian James replaced Drudi when the #27 pitted, dropping to fourth in class.

Martin Berry spun at Tetre Rouge on his outlap in the #61 Mercedes, having taken over from Maxime Martin he dropped further back with a resulting puncture causing damage to the bodywork and the front splitter.

With an hour gone Hawksworth’s gambit had paid off, he was now leading with 10 seconds back to the pole-sitting #27 and the sister #78 now third ahead of both BMWs, #32 ahead of #69.

Another silver car hailing from Germany was the first to find itself in the garage proper, with Yasser Shahin’s #92 Porsche 911 992 GT3 Evo brought into the pits with extensive work being done to repair an internal issue, eventually re-remerging 20 minutes later, albeit 3 laps down.

image credit: T GOUREAU, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons