Cadillac wraps up 2026 with Monza win

Victory at the 6 Hours of Monza went to the #38 Cadillac V-Series.R of Aitken/Bourdais/Bamber. Second and third at the season finale in Italy were the #36 Alpine A424 (Gounon/Martins) and the #51 Ferrari 499P (Pier Guidi/Calado/Giovinazzi) which salvaged a podium finish on home soil. Toyota's Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa are this year's Drivers' champions.

The #38 Cadillac leapt from Row 2 of the Monza grid to take control early on thanks to an assertive opening stint by Jack Aitken. On its way to its second FIA WEC victory, the American prototype he shared with Sébastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber successfully double-stinted its soft Michelin Pilot Sport Endurance slicks.

Meanwhile, Alpine Endurance Team concluded its involvement in the FIA World Endurance Championship with a fine second place with its #36 car, while the #51 Ferrari emerged from the race's entertaining closing stages inside the top-three.

Prior to Sunday's race, the conditions had been wet for all three free practice sessions, providing another opportunity for the new Michelin Pilot Sport Endurance Wet – which contains 57% renewable/recycled materials – to showcase its performance.

Qualifying was an all-dry affair, as was Sunday's main attraction, although the temperature barely exceeded 10°C, leading the teams to run Michelin's soft slick throughout. In the shootout for pole, this tire helped the track record to tumble by two seconds before showcasing its consistency over two stints in the race. The pole-winning #50 Ferrari even managed to triple-stint the same two right-hand slicks over 79 laps/450km.

A crash for the #12 Cadillac with only a minute to go and a post-finish penalty handed to the #007 Aston Martin saw fourth and fifth spots to the #94 Peugeot 9X8 and #15 BMW.

Despite recently wrapping up the 2026 Manufacturers' title, Toyota failed to make it into the top-10 at Monza. However, eleventh place for its #8 prototype sufficed for Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa to clinch the 2026 Drivers' crown, ahead of team-mates silver-medalists Conway/Kobayashi/De Vries (#7).

The Italian race brought to an end what turned out to be a key FIA WEC campaign for Michelin after its introduction at the beginning of the year of a brand new range of Pilot Sport Endurance slicks which feature a new 'Vision' tread finish and contain 50% renewable/recycled materials.

“We met our objective which was to provide top-flight endurance racing with more sustainable tires with no detriment to either performance or safety,” says Pierre Alves, manager of Michelin Motorsport's endurance racing programs. “Our latest slicks helped four of our Hypercar partners to win races while also contributing to a number of new records. So a big thank you to our engineers, developers, technicians and fitters for the roles they all played personally to make the year such a success for Michelin.”