Race day for the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship is finally upon us.
But how will it go down? And how much has changed since the Prologue? Well, the free practice sessions give us some clues.
Firstly, let's quickly examine what the pace order from the Prologue was. We thought, based on analysis performed by Only Endurance, that the order looked something like this: Ferrari, Cadillac, BMW, Peugeot, Alpine, Toyota, Porsche and Aston Martin.
Phil Oakley
This hasn't changed all that much in the practice sessions. Ferrari and Cadillac are still at the top, but there's also a surprise addition (relative to the Prologue) of Porsche behind them. Then comes Peugeot, Alpine and BMW, then Toyota, then Aston Martin.
With that said, let's look at this in detail.
As you can see from the graph, the satellite #83 AF Corse Ferrari topped the long run pace in FP1. New boy Phil Hanson did a eight lap stint to set this average, a 01:43.857, under a third of the expected stint length in the race, of 30 laps.
So, obviously, this may not be representative. But, that said, Ferrari factory driver Alessandro Pier Guidi did a 10-lap stint and was just four hundredths slower, so it's hard to say.
Behind them was the #12 Cadillac of Will Stevens, with the Briton doing exactly the same stint as Pier Guidi — lap 2 to 11 — to go just over two tenths slower than the Italian.
New Porsche Penske factory driver Julien Andlauer was fourth, which moves Porsche up from languishing near the back in the Prologue to nearer, at least, the sharp end of the pack. The Frenchman was well over half a second off Hanson's average, but shows Porsche have put in the hours in the gap between the Prologue and free practice. Or maybe they've just misplaced some sandbags. Who can say.
Peugeot, BMW, and Alpine are all grouped together. They're not ginormous amounts off Ferrari and Cadillac — the fastest BMW, the #20 of Robin Frijns, was eight tenths a lap off, while the fastest Peugeot, the #93 of Mikkel Jensen, was 1.2s off. But it's significant enough that we might see them fall back in the race.
Toyota are still in the doldrums a bit, as you can see in both graphs. The Japanese-German manufacturer struggled here in the past last year and it seems those struggles are continuing this year as well.
If you listen to the team they don't sound overly confident about the race ahead. Consider Ryo Hirakawa's statement, 'The car is working better than in the Prologue which is a good thing, but we are not yet in the top group in terms of lap time, unfortunately.
'We never give up and I feel like the team is on the case. We are doing our best; the race will be challenging but let’s see what we can achieve.'
So, if you're expecting Toyota to suddenly be quickest in the race, as we've seen them do before... like last year, don't bank on it. But at the same time, don't ever count them out, the wily old foxes.
Looking at FP2, the pace window shrinks quite dramatically.
We've got seven of the eight manufacturers with at least one car within half a second of each other, based on long run pace.
Surprisingly, Peugeot led the long run pace tables, with the #93 of Jensen at the top, with the Dane setting a 01:43.927 on average, across a 13-lap stint. #50 Ferrari's Miguel Molina, though wasn't far back, just 0.021 thousandths, with the #12 Cadillac of Norman Nato third.
Fourth to ninth on the FP2 graph there, from the #6 Porsche of Matt Campbell to the #7 Toyota of Nyck de Vries, are covered by two and a half tenths. And from Jensen, as the fastest, to de Vries is just 0.412.
The only manufacturer who didn't have a car in that bracket was, perhaps understandably, Aston Martin. Ross Gunn, in the #007 Valkyrie, was the fastest of the two, 1.154 seconds on average off Jensen. That's a much smaller gap than in FP1, so it's coming down — but don't expect them to be challenging the regulars just yet.
So where does this leave us?
In short, it leaves us, or rather WEC, in what looks like a very competitive place.
Doing the same as we did at the Prologue — averaging out a team's FP1 and FP2 averages by taking both cars results (graph below) and then taking a team's best result from each session (second graph below), things look very close.
A couple of things to note here. Porsche fall back in the first graph because the #5 car, with Julien Andlauer at the wheel, had an outlier lap in its stint in FP2.
The session wasn't yellow during his stint so I can't remove the lap — it's just something to bear in mind. Maybe he had traffic, it's very hard to know. But it was the car's longest, and fastest, stint.
It rectifies itself in the second graph, taking the best average from each team in FP1 and FP2, because the #6 car had a much better average in FP2. So Porsche jump from second to last in the first graph, to a more representative third in the second.
And, we've already said this, but it's just enormously close all through the field. If you look at FP2, apart from (again, understandably — new car and all) Aston Martin, the seven other manufacturers are within six tenths of each other.
The same thing I've described for Porsche happens to BMW as well, but the other way round. As far as I can tell this is because their averages for both cars for both sessions are, for the most part, consistent — one car is well within a tenth in terms of average in both sessions, while the other isn't quite as consistent, with eight tenths between the averages it generated in both sessions.
But these averages are also fairly low, so even if you pick the best average BMW did with both cars, from each session, they fall back. This is a bit of an outlier in terms of order, so I think come race day they'll jump back to at least the middle of the field, if not higher up.
So, while these graphs may not give us the exact pace order — because it's impossible to know — it hopefully gives some kind of rough idea into who's where. The consistent themes: Ferrari and Cadillac look the strongest, with Porsche, Peugeot, BMW Alpine and Toyota following them. Aston Martin, still learning about the Valkyrie in their and its first race weekend, are a little way back.
We'll be back with race analysis after the race, which starts 14;00 local time, 11:00 UTC. Catch you then.
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