BMW's #15 Car Won in Brazil by Less Than a Lap's Margin, and Reopened the Whole WEC Title Fight
Kevin Magnussen, Dries Vanthoor, and Raffaele Marciello held off a late-race Ferrari charge at Interlagos, while their teammates in the #20 car retook the championship lead on points.
BMW M Team WRT won the Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo on July 12, 2026, at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace — Interlagos — with the #15 Hypercar of Kevin Magnussen, Dries Vanthoor, and Raffaele Marciello crossing the line 2.254 seconds ahead of the #51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P of James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi, and Alessandro Pier Guidi. It was one of the closest finishes of the season, decided in the closing laps after Vanthoor spent much of the final stint fending off the Ferrari through Interlagos' fast, undulating layout.
"This has been a long time coming. I'm just so happy to finally get the victory. Everything was on-point, from the strategy to the pit-stops," Magnussen said afterward, according to the FIA WEC's own race report. It was the #15 car's first win of the season and BMW M Team WRT's second overall, after the marque's breakthrough FIA WEC victory at Spa-Francorchamps earlier in the year with the sister #20 entry.
Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA rounded out the Hypercar podium in third with pole-sitters Will Stevens and Norman Nato, a quieter result after a difficult race for both of the team's V-Series.R entries. In LMGT3, Racing Team Turkey by TF took the class win with Salih Yoluç, Peter Dempsey, and Charlie Eastwood in a Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R, finishing 8.108 seconds clear of a BMW-run Team WRT entry in the same class.
The result's bigger consequence landed a car back: BMW's #20 crew of André Rast and Robin Frijns didn't win at São Paulo, but the #15 car's victory over the championship-leading Ferraris was enough to pull Rast and Frijns back into a tie for the points lead with Le Mans winners Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Nyck de Vries. With title contenders now separated by nothing, the FIA WEC's next round moves to the Circuit of the Americas in September.
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Henry Ford II tried to buy Ferrari in 1963. When Enzo Ferrari pulled out at the last minute, Ford's response was to build a car specifically to beat Ferrari at its own race.