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What is the closest finish in WEC history?

The closest overall finish in WEC history came at the 2014 6 Hours of São Paulo, where the No. 14 Porsche 919 Hybrid beat the No. 8 Toyota TS040 Hybrid by 0.170 seconds after 249 laps. It was the 919's first WEC win. Up to the 2026 Fuji round, only two other races in WEC Engine's archive of 106 had finished with a margin under one second, most recently the 2026 6 Hours of Fuji itself at 0.591 seconds.

The three sub-second finishes

Interlagos 2014 ended with the field bunched by a late safety car. The No. 14 Porsche of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb held on from the No. 8 Toyota of Sébastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson, who had already sealed the 2014 drivers' title.

The second-closest finish, at the 2017 6 Hours of the Circuit of the Americas, was an all-Porsche affair. The No. 2 Porsche LMP Team 919 Hybrid of Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber crossed the line 0.276 seconds ahead of the sister No. 1 car.

The third came at Fuji on 27 September 2026. A late safety car and a strategy call put the No. 8 Toyota Racing TR010 Hybrid of Buemi, Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa ahead, and it beat the No. 36 Alpine A424 by 0.591 seconds. It is the closest finish of the Hypercar era.

How close WEC finishes usually are

Sub-second margins are rare. Of the 106 races in the archive after the 2026 Fuji round, 22 finished with the top two on the same lap and less than five seconds apart, and 29 inside ten seconds. At the other extreme, the winner finished at least a lap clear of second place in 22 races, roughly one in five.

Many of the tight finishes were sister cars. Six of the ten closest margins in the archive were one-twos for a single team, including the 2018 6 Hours of Spa, where the two Toyota TS050 Hybrids finished 1.444 seconds apart, and the 2017 Nürburgring race, settled by 1.606 seconds between the two Porsches.

The closest finishes between rival manufacturers were Interlagos 2014, Fuji 2026, Fuji 2016 (Toyota over Audi by 1.439 seconds) and the 2024 Lone Star Le Mans, where the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari beat the No. 7 Toyota by 1.780 seconds.

The closest Le Mans finishes

Le Mans has never produced a margin close to the six-hour records. The closest WEC-era finish at La Sarthe in the archive was the 2026 race, where the No. 7 Toyota beat the No. 20 BMW by 10.913 seconds after 381 laps.

That margin beat the 2024 race, where the No. 50 Ferrari won by 14.221 seconds from the No. 7 Toyota, and 2025, where the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari finished 14.084 seconds ahead of the No. 6 Porsche. The 2019 race, a Toyota one-two, finished 16.972 seconds apart.

Several Le Mans races ended with the winner laps clear. The 2014 race finished with three laps between the two leading Audis, and the 2020 race with five laps between the winning Toyota and the Rebellion in second.

What makes a finish close

The common thread in the closest races is a late neutralisation. Safety cars bunched the field in the final stages at Interlagos in 2014 and at Fuji in 2026, turning races that might have been decided by tens of seconds into sprints.

Balance of Performance also plays a part in the Hypercar era. Three Hypercar-era races in the archive have finished with a rival manufacturer second and less than 2.5 seconds behind the winner, two of them in 2026: Fuji and São Paulo, where the No. 15 BMW beat the No. 51 Ferrari by 2.254 seconds. With BoP tuned to keep the Hypercar field close, the 2014 record of 0.170 seconds is more exposed now than at any time since it was set.

Last updated · closest finish · photo finish · winning margin · wec records · porsche 919 · interlagos 2014

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Related questions

Manufacturers

What was the Porsche 919 Hybrid era?

The Porsche 919 Hybrid raced in the WEC's LMP1 class from 2014 to 2017. It won three consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans (2015, 2016 and 2017) and the manufacturers' and drivers' world titles in 2015, 2016 and 2017. The archive credits it with 16 WEC wins; the 2016 Le Mans, which a 919 also won, is not yet in the archive. Porsche left LMP1 at the end of 2017 to move into Formula E.

Manufacturers

What was the Toyota TS050 Hybrid era like?

The Toyota TS050 Hybrid raced in the WEC's LMP1 class from 2016 to 2020. It won 19 WEC races, including three consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans (2018, 2019 and 2020), and its crews won the drivers' world titles in 2018-19 and 2019-20. It is also the car of one of Le Mans' best-known late losses: in 2016 the leading TS050 stopped in the final minutes and Porsche won.

Events

Who has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the WEC era?

Since the FIA WEC began in 2012, only four manufacturers have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright: Audi (2012 to 2014), Porsche (2015 to 2017), Toyota (2018 to 2022, plus 2026) and Ferrari (2023 to 2025). Fifteen editions from 2012 to 2026, four badges, and three distinct dynasties broken only by the swing years between eras. The full year-by-year list, with crews and race distance, is below.

Manufacturers

Which manufacturer has won the most Hypercar-era WEC races?

Toyota has won the most Hypercar-era WEC races, with 24 overall victories since the class arrived in 2021, counted up to the 2026 Barcelona round. Ferrari has 8 wins, Porsche 4, Alpine 3, BMW 2 and Cadillac 1.