Last week we saw the ACO rules European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup Series conduct their pre-season Prologue test before their respective opening races of their 2026 seasons from Barcelona, and this week sees the FIA World Endurance Championship undertake the same from Imola, Italy.
This venue should of course have been the second round to the season but (continuing) political and military instability around the area of Qatar saw that venue postponed until later in the year (if possible) with the double duty of both the Prologue and thus opening round to the season moving onto Italy.
For many teams, their cars and equipment arrived back from the Middle East just over a week ago, giving them little time to repack and dispatch in time for tomorrow’s Prologue test.
Running both the Hypercar and LMGT3 classes, 2026 will again see two Aston Martin Valkyrie’s from the Heart of Racing team as well as both Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3 entries permitted per manufacturer.
The #007 and #009 Valkyrie driver line ups remain unchanged from last year as Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble pair up again in the former with Alex Riberas and Marco Sorensen within the latter.
It is the same for the #27 HoRT AR Vantage GT3 as Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Mattia Drudi team up for a second season togther of their own but diary clashes between the FIA WEC and IMSA has seen the HoRT make driver changes between the two series as Eduardo Barrichello runs within the IMSA series at Long Beach this weekend. That gives the young Kobe Pauwels his FIA WEC debut alongside the debuting Gary Newell with a more experienced individual in Le Mans winner Jonny Adam.
Tomorrows Prologue will see up to eight hours of running across two sessions before the timetable takes the teams and crews into the opening gambits of round one with the first Free Practice session on Friday.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media