Nicklas Nielsen, Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina won the 2026 Lone Star Le Mans in the No. 50 Ferrari 499P after Nyck de Vries, who had controlled the closing stages, reported a hydraulic problem inside the final 15 minutes and took the No. 7 Toyota to the pit lane for good.It was a cruel end to a race Toyota had engineered almost perfectly, and a breakthrough for Ferrari, which entered the race winless in 2026 and spent most of the afternoon trying to salvage an evaporated pole position advantage.“Today was our day,” Molina said.“We were a bit lucky, to be honest,” Nielsen said, adding, “It’s been a long time coming for this team.”Charles Milesi crossed the line second in the No. 35 Alpine, but a five-second penalty bumped his team to third and gave Jack Aitken, Sebastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber in the No. 38 Cadillac second place on the podium.“My engineer told me [Milesi] had an investigation about three laps before the end,” Nielsen said. “I wasn’t going to let him pass at any second, anyway.”Toyota still extended its championship lead thanks to a P6 finish from the No. 8 car, but BMW leaves Austin still on the heels of the Japanese marque with three races remaining, nine points behind.When the race got going after a spit of rain showers, it was polesitter Antonio Giovinazzi who led in the No. 51 Ferrari, edging clear of Aitken’s No. 38 Cadillac. But the first pit sequence scrambled the order, with Ferrari, Toyota and Cadillac all splitting strategies across their cars: the No. 8 Toyota, No. 12 Cadillac and No. 50 Ferrari came in early and stayed on used rubber, which handed Molina the lead when Giovinazzi took fresh tires.Sébastien Buemi turned the No. 8 into a threat before both off-sequence cars dropped away at their second stops, restoring Giovinazzi to the front — only for the No. 51 to lose ground when Calado’s engine failed to restart cleanly during that stop, costing him nearly half a minute. That left the No. 38 Cadillac as the net leader, with Sébastien Bourdais heading the field on a conventional strategy.The race pivoted twice in quick succession. A slow stop dropped the No. 51 to the lower reaches of the top 10, and a Safety Car for track repairs bunched everything up. Earl Bamber inherited the lead in the Cadillac on 44-lap-old tires and defended it stubbornly.De Vries eventually made a move stick at Turn 1 with three hours and 45 minutes run, and once in clear air he showed off some of the best pure pace of the race. A caution period for the stopped No. 78 Lexus at Turn 3 let Toyota bring in the car for free. With fuel-saving no longer needed, de Vries and Milesi could race flat-out without extra pit stops or energy cuts when the race resumed with under 50 minutes remaining.It stayed a fight for one corner. de Vries opened up a big gap on Milesi until the steering hydraulics in his car failed, sending him back to the garage and leaving Toyota still winless at COTA.“We’ve been fighting hard, but it’s a shame because we had the opportunity to score good points with both cars,” said Toyota team principal David Floury. “At the end of the day, we come back with not much.”Nielsen had been closing in when the Toyota’s trouble struck. “I managed to do some lap times that were a bit faster, but then eventually he climbed to a level that he hit really quickly,” he said. “They had an issue, and we were a bit lucky to be able to take it to the end.”The No. 20 BMW of René Rast, Robin Frijns, and Sheldon van der Linde finished 12th in class, scoring no points alongside the damaged No. 7 Toyota. Rast and Frijns remain tied with the No. 7 crew for the drivers’ championship lead.Tom Gamble brought the No. 007 Aston Martin home fourth ahead of Victor Martins, who produced the drive of the final hour in the No. 36 Alpine, picking off Kevin Magnussen, Will Stevens and Mathys Jaubert in the space of a few laps. Buemi salvaged sixth with a series of late lunges into Turn 11.The No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage on track during Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas. (Andrea Lorenzina / DPPI / Sipa USA via Getty Images)In LMGT3, Heart of Racing converted its front-row lockout. Mattia Drudi took the flag in the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage he shares with Ian James and Zacharie Robichon, 6.2s clear of Ayhancan Güven’s No. 91 Manthey DKR Porsche, with Eduardo Barrichello third in the polesitting No. 23. It’s the team’s second victory in Austin in the last three years.“The car was really happy around this track,” said Robichon, who took his first career WEC victory on Sunday. He added, “I mean, it feels like we’ve been close so many times, so to finally kind of break through, I think the team deserves it. Ian handed the car over in a great spot.”Iron Lynx’s Maxime Martin passed Güven for the lead and looked capable of delivering Mercedes-AMG its first WEC victory before a drive-through for a full-course yellow infringement gutted the effort; he finished sixth, with the class fastest lap as consolation. Garage 59’s afternoon unraveled entirely across a spin, a puncture and a stopped car.Championship leader Jonny Edgar salvaged 12th in the No. 33 Corvette, a lap down and out of the picture all day, but leaves Austin with a four-point lead in the LMGT3 standings. TF Sport still holds a commanding 22-point lead in the team championship.