Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen, and Miguel Molina have won the Qatar 1812km, the opening race of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship season, completing a Ferrari 1-2-3 for the first time ever in modern WEC history.
The Italian cars dominated the race and led the majority of it with one of the three cars leading for most of the race.
Fuoco crossed the line first in the #50 Ferrari 499P, followed by the yellow ‘satellite’ car, the #83 machine driven by Robert Kubica in the final stint. The Pole was just 2.348 away from Fuoco at the line, but fading tyres meant he couldn’t catch the Ferrari factory driver.
Kubica did, though, fend off another Ferrari factory driver Alessandro Pier Guidi, in the sister #51 car, with Pier Guidi just three tenths behind Kubica’s yellow Ferrari as they crossed the line. Pier Guidi had chased down Kubica in the final hour, with new tyres on the factory car, but couldn’t find a way past, with the 40-year-old defending second brilliantly.
Calado starts strong for Ferrari
The #51 car started from pole with Pier Guidi’s teammate James Calado behind the wheel. Calado retained the lead at the start and fended off a challenge at turn 1 from Nielsen in the sister car, who had jumped Kevin Magnussen in the #15 BMW, with the former F1 driver slipping back from second to third.
Calado, then, led much of the first two and a half hours of the race, only relinquishing it through pit stops.
Further back, Ferdinand Habsburg went from ninth to fourth on the opening lap in the #35 Alpine A424, while Cadillac’s Will Stevens went the other way. Habsburg unintentionally tagged him on the exit of turn 1 and the #12 Cadillac, with Stevens behind the wheel, dropped from fourth to 12th as a result.
In fifth after the opening laps was Stevens’ teammate, Earl Bamber, in the sister #38 Cadillac.
Calado led for the first hour until he pitted after 34 laps. Nielsen pitted slightly earlier, six seconds adrift of his Ferrari teammate. Behind was Habsburg in the Alpine.
A full course yellow had been called 10 laps before Calado pitted to recover debris, and as the track returned to green, Kevin Magnussen’s speed limiter in the BMW had failed to disengage, causing him to drop from third to ninth, promoting Habsburg into third.
Bamber also came unstuck in the #38 Cadillac, tagging the #59 United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of James Cottingham at turn 1 as the Kiwi lapped the McLaren, spinning and losing fourth, dropping to 17th.
Calado stayed in the lead Ferrari for a full two and a bit hours, leading the vast majority of those laps. He finally climbed out, pitting just before a virtual safety car was called, at the start of the third hour, to recover Christian Reid’s stricken #61 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT, who had spun at turn 9 and was beached in the gravel.
Pitting before the virtual safety car meant their rivals got a strategy jump on them — namely the two JOTA-run factory Cadillacs. Stevens and Bamber pitted when the pit lane was open under VSC, and the Cadillacs emerged in the lead, with Lynn replacing Stevens in the #12 and Bamber’s replacement in the #38, Jenson Button, second.
Antonio Giovinazzi was now in the former leader, the #51 Ferrari, who was now third, with Antonio Fuoco having replaced Nielsen in the #50 machine in fourth.
Fifth was now Yifei Ye in the yellow #83 AF Corse Ferrari, with #20 BMW’s Robin Frijns sixth and Charles Milesi, who’d taken over from Habsburg, seventh.
Meanwhile, the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid was eighth. The car, which had started 17th with Sebastien Buemi at the wheel, was now in sixth, and had Brendon Hartley at the wheel.
Cadillac disaster
However, as the safety car lights went off to signal an impending restart, disaster for Cadillac and JOTA. Lynn had been staying glued to Button’s gearbox. Button accelerated then braked to warm his tyres before releasing the field, but Lynn misinterpreted this as the restart proper. When Button braked, Lynn went into the back of his teammate.
Both cars immediately pitted, relinquishing the lead back to who else: the #51 Ferrari of Giovinazzi, with Fuoco and Ye behind him, creating a Ferrari 1-2-3.
The Cadillacs, the main challengers to the Ferraris based on pace, were now out the way — Lynn would return to the track on the lead lap but out of the top 10, and would later get a drive through penalty for his trouble, while Button went a lap down and would later drop more laps with associated problems from the crash.
When the safety car came back in, Giovinazzi continued where Calado had left off, maintaining the lead over the sister car. He extended a gap, gradually, over the next stint, but towards the end, Fuoco spun overtaking GT3 traffic and promoted Ye to second and BMW’s Frijns to third, with the Italian dropping to fifth. In fourth, ominously, was the #8 Toyota of Brendon Hartley.
It all came a bit unstuck for Giovinazzi though, at this point. He received a drive through penalty for VSC procedure infringements, dropping into the lower reaches of the top 10, putting Ye in the #83 car into the lead, with Fuoco having recovered to second.
Ye promptly extended a gap to Fuoco, up to 15 seconds at one point, with the two Toyotas of Kobayashi and Hartley now third and fourth.
Ye climbed out at his next stop, and was replaced by Phil Hanson in the yellow Ferrari, the Briton’s first ever race in a Ferrari, with Fuoco’s seat being taken by Miguel Molina in the factory car.
Molina soon began closing down the gap Ye had created, but another safety car was called on the halfway mark, with debris on track on the racing line.
This did the hard work for Molina, putting him mere tenths behind Hanson. However, it wasn’t long before the fourth safety car of the race was called, as the #77 Proton Ford Mustang had caught fire on the pit straight, and pulled over at the right side of turn 1.
When the race went green again, it didn’t take too long for Molina to take the lead off Hanson. He held off Nyck de Vries, now in the #7 Toyota, for second, though, with the Dutchman breathing down his neck and the other Toyota, the #8, now Ryo Hirawaka behind the wheel, not far behind either.
For the most part, the race order at the sharp end stayed like this for the next hour and a half. Molina began building a lead to Hanson, with the Spaniard then handing the #50 car over to Nicklas Nielsen, who continued that work and built a gap of eight seconds.
Hanson then handed over to Kubica, who gradually got the lead down but not close enough to Molina to fight for the lead.
Toyota move up the order
Behind the two Ferraris, the two Toyotas were duking it out with the BMWs, who had emerged as the chief challengers to the Japanese-German cars, even if neither could challenge the Italian manufacturer in the lead.
Sheldon van der Linde, in the Shell-sponsored #20 car, advanced into third, ahead of Mike Conway, who had replaced Nyck de Vries in the #7 Toyota.
Behind them, in fifth, was Calado, back in the #51, who was advancing through the field to recover the ground lost after Giovinazzi’s penalties. The Italian had taken two drive-throughs, the latter for pitlane speeding, setting the #51 back considerably from its earlier position.
Kubica, though, was on a mission. At the pitstops he jumped Fuoco, growing a lead of six seconds while Fuoco warmed up his new tyres.
The Italian soon brought this gap down, though, to well under a second, but try as he might, he could not find a way past Kubica.
No matter, though. Kubica had less fuel than the factory car of Fuoco, and would have to stop first. When he did, Fuoco put the hammer down, and emerged six seconds ahead of Kubica when the stops evened out.
There was now an hour to go: crunch time.
Fuoco, having not got new boots at the stops, had tyre problems, with his left front particularly susceptible to wear. Kubica had treated his tyres kinder, and while he had also not got new rubber, he was able to close that gap down to three seconds.
Behind Kubica, Calado had handed the #51 over to Pier Guidi. The Italian chased down Kubica and got within a few tenths, but like Fuoco earlier, could not find his way past a defensively brilliant Kubica.
And that was the way it stayed, with the three crossing the line in that order to sweep the podium, the yellow “satellite” car sandwiched by the factory-run machines.
Fourth was the #15 BMW of Dries Vanthoor, who had managed to fend off the two Toyotas. In actuality, D. Vanthoor finished considerably ahead, with Buemi eight seconds adrift and Kobayashi less than a second behind his teammate.
Seventh was the sister #20 BMW of Robin Frijns, with Alex Lynn recovering the #12 Cadillac to eighth in the end. Ninth was the first of the Peugeots, the #93 9X8 of Mikkel Jensen, and ninth was the #5 Porsche of Michael Christensen, with Porsche unable to repeat their success here last year.
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