Vanthoor hands BMW Le Mans pole after Aitken's stunning lap is deleted

BMW will lead the field away at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time in the Hypercar era after a Hyperpole 2 session of almost unbearable drama. Jack Aitken appeared to have snatched pole for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA by five thousandths of a second, only for his lap to be deleted, restoring Dries Vanthoor and the BMW he shares with Kevin Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello to the top of the order with the fastest qualifying lap of the Hypercar era. There was late drama in LMP2 too, where a penalty stripped the fastest car of top spot and handed pole to IDEC Sport, while Mattia Drudi made it back to back LMGT3 poles for Heart of Racing.

Image - Rick Kiewiet - Prescott Motorsport

For a few giddy minutes on Thursday night, this was Cadillac's pole. Aitken had crossed the line with a sensational 3:22.559 in the dying moments of the shootout, pinching top spot from Vanthoor by a margin that works out to less than half a metre across more than thirteen and a half kilometres of racetrack. Then the timing screens blinked, the lap vanished, and the order flipped. Vanthoor's 3:22.564, set moments earlier under the same fading light, stands as the pole time, and it is quicker than anything the Hypercar rules have produced at La Sarthe.

It is a result that rewards a quietly brilliant week from BMW M Team WRT. The crew had threaded its way through every stage of qualifying without fuss, and when the moment came, the Belgian delivered. For Magnussen, the Dane in his first season after leaving Formula 1, the front of the grid at Le Mans is quite the welcome.

How the shootout works

The grid for Saturday's race is set across three stages spread over two evenings, in a format refined for this year. Wednesday's qualifying sessions, one shared by LMP2 and LMGT3 and one for the Hypercars, whittled each class down to fifteen runners. Those fifteen returned on Thursday for Hyperpole 1, twenty minutes in which only the top ten progressed, with positions eleven to fifteen frozen where they finished. The survivors then contested Hyperpole 2, a fifteen minute sprint that decides pole in each class and, for the Hypercars, the overall honour of leading the field away.

Crucially, no driver may take part in more than one of the three segments. A crew that reaches the final shootout must therefore have used all three of its drivers along the way, which turns qualifying at Le Mans into a genuine team exercise rather than a showcase for a single hot shoe. It also explains why the names at the top of each session keep changing: the man who banked the lap that mattered on Thursday night was not the one who got the car there on Wednesday.

Hypercar: heartbreak for Cadillac as Toyota tumble out

The first act produced the night's biggest shock. Charles Milesi laid down a mighty 3:23.018 to top Hyperpole 1 for Alpine, with Earl Bamber's Cadillac just 0.073 behind and the Genesis of teenager Mathys Jaubert an astonishing third on the marque's Le Mans debut. But behind them, both Toyotas missed the cut. Kamui Kobayashi lost a lap to track limits, Ryo Hirakawa could not find the pace when it mattered, and for once the final shootout went ahead without the team that has defined the Hypercar era. They were joined on the sidelines by the Aston Martin of Ross Gunn, the Ferrari qualified by Antonio Fuoco and the second Alpine.

There was a scare for the Cadillac shared by Louis Delétraz, Will Stevens and Norman Nato, which had two of its Hyperpole 1 laps cancelled after the technical delegate found a braking torque infringement. The car scraped through in any case, and Stevens went on to put it second in the shootout, a fine recovery on a night when the team could so easily have unravelled.

The finale itself was delayed a few minutes, and when it began the track was at its quickest of the week. Vanthoor set the early pace, became the first man all week into the 3:22s and then lowered his own mark, before Aitken produced a final sector for the ages to go five thousandths quicker still. Cadillac celebrated, BMW commiserated, and then the stewards intervened. Aitken had left the working lane to join the fast lane before the Race Director's instruction as the session got under way, and the punishment was the cancellation of his best lap, the very same infringement that had caught Verschoor in the LMP2 session barely an hour earlier. With the lap gone, the car tumbles from first to tenth on its only remaining representative time, and the pole that briefly belonged to the team that started from the front last year now sits with BMW.

Stevens still salvaged plenty for the Cadillac garage with second in the recovering sister car, while António Félix da Costa could only manage third as Alpine's headline pace from Wednesday faded when it mattered most. Frijns made it two BMWs in the top four, underlining the strength of the Munich marque's evening.

Image - Rick Kiewiet - Prescott Motorsport

Genesis, remarkably, put both cars in the top ten on debut, Paul-Loup Chatin taking sixth ahead of the sister car of André Lotterer. James Calado salvaged eighth for Ferrari, the best the famous marque could muster in a week that has gone from bad to worse: the sister car starts twelfth, and the yellow machine that won the race outright last year never even made it out of Wednesday qualifying and lines up seventeenth, sandwiched between the two eliminated Peugeots.

LMP2: Masson fastest, but the pole belongs to IDEC Sport

The prototype class produced the night's cruellest twist. Esteban Masson, just 21 years old and the revelation of the European Le Mans Series season, hurled the Forestier Racing by Panis Oreca to a stunning 3:32.855 under the chequered flag, comfortably the fastest LMP2 lap of the week. The celebrations lasted only as long as it took the paperwork to catch up: the car carried a one place grid penalty for impeding a McLaren during Wednesday qualifying, and so pole passes to IDEC Sport.

Image - Rick Kiewiet - Prescott Motorsport

Job van Uitert had done exactly what was needed to capitalise, stealing second on the road from Jack Doohan in the dying moments and ending up 0.387 from Masson's best. The Dutchman, sharing with Paul Lafargue and Valerio Rinicella, inherits a pole the team will feel it earned the hard way. Doohan, the former Formula 1 driver, takes a fine third for Nielsen Racing, while Alexander Quinn claimed Pro/Am honours for CrowdStrike Racing by APR in fifth overall.

Spare a thought for Duqueine. Doriane Pin had been the class of Wednesday qualifying, but Richard Verschoor had his best Hyperpole 1 lap cancelled for leaving the working lane before the race director's instruction, and Julien Andlauer could do no better than sixth in the finale. Tom Dillmann, who had topped Hyperpole 1 for Inter Europol Competition, saw his crew slip to fourth when it counted.

LMGT3: Drudi doubles up for Heart of Racing

If the other two classes were decided by fractions, Mattia Drudi made LMGT3 look almost straightforward. The Aston Martin works driver had his first flying lap deleted for track limits, shrugged, and responded with a 3:52.433 that no one came within nine tenths of matching. It is a second consecutive Le Mans pole for both Drudi and the Heart of Racing Team, and it capped a perfect evening for the crew after Zacharie Robichon had been quickest in

Hyperpole 1 in the same car.

Image - Rick Kiewiet - Prescott Motorsport

Alessio Rovera took second for Vista AF Corse ahead of the two Akkodis ASP Lexus entries, with José María López edging Jack Hawksworth despite the latter's car suffering a door that refused to shut as the final session began, the crew eventually persuading it closed with a hammer. The Team WRT BMWs filled the third row, and Jonny Adam put the second Heart of Racing Aston eighth.

The class had already lost its fastest qualifier before Hyperpole began. The Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette topped Wednesday's times only to be disqualified for a diffuser infringement, sending it to the back of the grid and promoting the Team Qatar by Iron Lynx Mercedes into the shootout, where it fell at the first hurdle along with both of the other Mercedes entries, the second Vista Ferrari and the Porsche of The Bend Manthey.

Results

Hypercar

Pos	No.	Car/Team	Drivers	Best lap
1	15	BMW M Team WRT	Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello, Dries Vanthoor	3:22.564
2	12	Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA	Louis Delétraz, Will Stevens, Norman Nato	3:23.078
3	35	Alpine Endurance Team	António Félix da Costa, Charles Milesi, Ferdinand Habsburg	3:23.620
4	20	BMW M Team WRT	Robin Frijns, René Rast, Sheldon van der Linde	3:23.764
5	101	Cadillac WTR	Ricky Taylor, Jordan Taylor, Filipe Albuquerque	3:23.778
6	19	Genesis Magma Racing	Mathieu Jaminet, Paul-Loup Chatin, Daniel Juncadella	3:23.823
7	009	Aston Martin THOR Team	Alex Riberas, Marco Sørensen, Roman De Angelis	3:24.729
8	51	Ferrari AF Corse	Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi	3:25.081
9	17	Genesis Magma Racing	André Lotterer, Pipo Derani, Mathys Jaubert	3:26.116
10	38	Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA	Sébastien Bourdais, Earl Bamber, Jack Aitken	3:26.865†
11	007	Aston Martin THOR Team	Harry Tincknell, Tom Gamble, Ross Gunn	3:24.004*
12	50	Ferrari AF Corse	Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen, Miguel Molina	3:24.105*
13	36	Alpine Endurance Team	Frédéric Makowiecki, Jules Gounon, Victor Martins	3:24.122*
14	7	Toyota Racing	Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries	3:24.268*
15	8	Toyota Racing	Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa	3:24.578*
16	93	Peugeot TotalEnergies	Paul Di Resta, Stoffel Vandoorne, Nick Cassidy	3:24.978‡
17	83	AF Corse	Yifei Ye, Robert Kubica, Phil Hanson	3:25.495‡
18	94	Peugeot TotalEnergies	Loïc Duval, Malthe Jakobsen, Théo Pourchaire	3:25.660‡

* Positions 11 to 15 set in Hyperpole 1. ‡ Positions 16 to 18 set in Wednesday qualifying. † Fastest lap of the session (3:22.559) cancelled by the stewards for leaving the working lane before the Race Director's instruction; classified on its remaining time.

LMP2

Pos	No.	Car/Team	Drivers	Best lap
1	28	IDEC Sport	Paul Lafargue, Valerio Rinicella, Job van Uitert	3:33.242
2	29	Forestier Racing by Panis	Louis Rousset, Esteban Masson, Oliver Gray	3:32.855**
3	24	Nielsen Racing	David Heinemeier Hansson, Edward Pearson, Jack Doohan	3:33.510
4	43	Inter Europol Competition	Jakub Smiechowski, Tom Dillmann, Nicholas Yelloly	3:33.578
5	4	CrowdStrike Racing by APR	George Kurtz, Alexander Quinn, Laurin Heinrich	3:33.628
6	30	Duqueine Team	Doriane Pin, Julien Andlauer, Richard Verschoor	3:33.702
7	14	TDS Racing	Tobias Lütke, Mathias Beche, Kévin Estre	3:33.715
8	99	AO by TF	PJ Hyett, James Allen, Dane Cameron	3:34.280
9	183	AF Corse	François Perrodo, Matthieu Vaxiviere, Ben Barnicoat	3:34.692
10	343	Inter Europol Competition	Bijoy Garg, Reshad de Gerus, Nico Müller	3:35.038

** Fastest time of the session; classified second after a one place grid penalty for impeding in qualifying.

LMGT3

Pos	No.	Car/Team	Drivers	Best lap
1	27	Heart of Racing Team (Aston Martin)	Ian James, Zacharie Robichon, Mattia Drudi	3:52.433
2	21	Vista AF Corse (Ferrari)	François Heriau, Simon Mann, Alessio Rovera	3:53.412
3	87	Akkodis ASP Team (Lexus)	Petru Umbrarescu, Clemens Schmid, José María López	3:53.614
4	78	Akkodis ASP Team (Lexus)	Tom Van Rompuy, Hadrien David, Jack Hawksworth	3:53.869
5	32	Team WRT (BMW)	Darren Leung, Sean Gelael, Augusto Farfus	3:54.401
6	69	Team WRT (BMW)	Anthony McIntosh, Parker Thompson, Daniel Harper	3:54.655
7	74	Kessel Racing (Ferrari)	Dustin Blattner, Lorenzo Patrese, Dennis Marschall	3:54.677
8	23	Heart of Racing Team (Aston Martin)	Gray Newell, Eduardo Barrichello, Jonny Adam	3:54.888
9	91	Manthey DK Engineering (Porsche)	James Cottingham, Timur Boguslavskiy, Ayhancan Güven	3:55.610
10	77	Proton Competition (Ford)	Eric Powell, Ben Tuck, Sebastian Priaulx	3:55.666

Words: Adam Prescott

Circuit de la Sarthe, 11 June 2026

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