6h Sao Paulo: Further reactions to the fourth round of the FIA WEC

The fourth race of the 2026 season in the World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) proved to be a resounding triumph for BMW. Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor won in the M Hybrid V8, ahead of the Ferrari 499P driven by James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi. This is the Bavarian manufacturer’s second victory of the season. Here are a few more comments from the Hypercar drivers on the race at Interlagos (São Paulo, Brazil).

Dries Vanthoor – winner in the BMW M Hybrid V8

“I’ve never experienced a situation quite like the one at the start of my stint before. I just got in and didn’t feel at all comfortable. I wasn’t feeling particularly well and, yes, I had to take a deep breath to somehow see it through to the end. But I’m absolutely delighted. The BMW M Team WRT did a brilliant job today. The strategy was fantastic and the car was phenomenal throughout the race. It’s taken a long time, we’ve worked really hard, and to achieve this now is just so, so wonderful. A huge thank you to everyone working behind the scenes.”

Sébastien Bourdais – fourth place in the Cadillac V-Series.R

“A good performance from the whole team. At times, it actually looked as though another one-two finish might be possible here. Nevertheless, we managed to fight our way back to fourth place and pick up some important points. We know we have the car to win – so we’ll keep going and work hard to keep making progress.”

Nicklas Nielsen – seventh place in the Ferrari 499P

“It was quite a difficult race for us. On a positive note, we’ve seen significant progress with the car compared to last year. The result didn’t quite live up to our hopes – and unfortunately, difficult days do happen. But now we’re setting our sights on the next race, where we want to bounce back.”

René Rast – eighth place in the BMW M Hybrid V8

“First of all, congratulations to the #15 crew on their victory! That’s a fantastic achievement for all of us. We in the #20 car can also be satisfied. These are valuable points in both championships – and Robin and I are back at the top of the drivers’ standings. Nevertheless, we need to look at why we couldn’t match the pace of our sister car. We did make up a lot of places during the race, but even then we didn’t have the same performance as the number 15.”

Stoffel Vandoorne – 16th place in the Peugeot 9X8

“It was a very difficult race for us. We picked up penalties and conditions were treacherous towards the end due to poor visibility. The positive thing is that we managed to get the car to the finish.”

Sébastien Buemi – 17th in the Toyota TR010 Hybrid

“This is definitely not the result we’d hoped for. We knew it wouldn’t be easy after qualifying. But we’d hoped to score a decent number of points – and the start went quite well too. However, the collision basically ended our race. After that, there was nothing we could do. We simply finished the race as cleanly as possible, in case the others might have some bad luck – but that didn’t happen.”