1. Toyota is back in the red

Toyota doesn’t just have a revised car with a new name, a TR rather than a GR010 Hybrid, it’s got a new colour scheme to go with what can be described as significant aero changes. The matte black livery of the past two seasons is gone, replaced by a predominantly red paint job with white flashes. It takes its inspiration from the retro livery run on the No7 car at Le Mans last year, which tipped its hat to the colours in which Toyota fielded its underachieving GT-One in its inaugural Le Mans campaign of 1998.

The current car started out at the beginning of the Hypercar era in 2021 running in a mish-mash of white, red and a bit of black. Before that, Toyota LMP1 cars were blue and white, though it is largely forgotten that, when Toyota presented the TS030 Hybrid that would take it back to Le Mans in 2012 on the rebirth of the World Endurance Championship, it was liveried in red and white.

By the time it came to its debut, delayed from Spa in May until Le Mans after a shunt in testing, the machine had changed to blue. The initial plan had been to run one of each. That was canned for various reasons. For a start, every hybrid Toyota road car had blue shading inside its interlocking oval badge, and there was also the concern about making enough sets of body parts to be wrapped in different colours to act as spares. Then there was the fact that Toyota reckoned its prototype just looked better in blue.

2. Dunlop no more

One of the most enduring landmarks on the Circuit de la Sarthe is gone. Sort of. The Dunlop Bridge for decades provided the backdrop to that famous first-lap photograph of the pack streaming down the hill into the Esses and on to Tertre Rouge and the start of the Mulsanne Straight. Or at least it did before that section of track was remodelled from a short straight into a new wiggle for 2002. The pedestrian track crossing over the chicane at the start of the 8.47-mile lap is now the Goodyear Bridge.

The structure of the bridge is the same, but it has been refaced in line with the new deal: it is still supposed to look like half a tyre! The backstory involves the complicated ownership history of the Dunlop brand. Goodyear had the rights to use the Dunlop name for tyres in several markets, including Europe and North America, but last year sold that to the Japanese Sumitomo Rubber Industries company, which had owned the bulk of Dunlop since the 1980s. Goodyear is the supplier of tyres for the LMP2 and LMGT3 classes, it should be pointed out.

It is the end of a story that dates to the inaugural running of the 24 Hours in 1923. The first Dunlop Bridge was near the Pontlieue hairpin at the north of the circuit in the days when it stretched into the city. It has been in its present location since 1932, but largely forgotten is the fact that there were two bridges bearing the word ‘Dunlop’, the second one near Tertre Rouge.

3. M24 – Le Mans’ new museum

Le Mans has a brand new museum for this year, which for those making a pilgrimage has to be a nailed-on visit. It has been built on the site of its previous home and is known as the M24 – Museum of Motorsport in reference to a partnership between the race organiser, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, and watchmaker Richard Mille. The Frenchman is also president of the FIA Endurance Commission and an avid car collector. Some of his 100-strong fleet will be part of the displays in the 8600sq m (92,570sq ft) building located at the main gate of the track.

It’s not just sports cars that will be in there from its opening on May 28. There will be sections dedicated to other disciplines of motor sport – Formula 1, rallying and IndyCar included. Machinery such as the 1924 Le Mans-winning Bentley 3-Litre Sport will be joined by a Ferrari F2002 driven by Michael Schumacher. There’s no word yet on whether there’ll be an example of McLaren’s USAC Indycar of the 1970s with which the museum shares its name!

4. Meanwhile, in LMGT3…

It’s largely business as usual in LMGT3, with one major exception. The British Garage 59 team has taken over as McLaren’s representative after United Autosports opted to step back to focus on its Hypercar entry with the British marque next year. Garage 59 is a fitting replacement because the team takes its name from the race number of the Le Mans-winning McLaren F1 GTR of 1995.

The organisation headed by four-time Le Mans participant Andrew Kirkaldy developed the first two McLaren GT3 cars, the MP4-12C and the 650S, before the manufacturer took the GT3 programme in-house on the launch of the 720S. It traded as McLaren GT but, when it decided that it ought to start running its own team to showcase the 650S, it came up with the Garage 59 name in a nice touch. It all seemed a bit strange when it was running Aston Martins in various series around Europe.

Otherwise, the same nine manufacturers and nine teams remain, although The Heart of Racing now has two Aston Martin Vantage GT3s run by the Prodrive/Aston Martin Racing operation. Gray Newell drives one of them. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the son of THOR co-founder and tech billionaire Gabe Newell, to whom we all owe thanks for providing the inspiration and much of the funding to revive the Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar project.

There’s no Valentino Rossi this year. The seven-time MotoGP champion scaled back his racing activities in 2025, concentrating on the WEC in LMGT3 with the BMW WRT team and only making occasional appearances in the GT World Challenge Europe in one of the team’s M4 GT3 Evos. For this year he’s contesting the full GTWCE.

5. Format fettling for qualifying

There’s a subtle tweak to the qualifying format for Le Mans this year. The additional third session introduced last year to the Hyperpole knock-out system that came on stream in 2020 remains, but there are limitations on who can drive when. In 2025, a driver taking part in the opening 30-minute session on Wednesday evening could also drive in one of the H1 or H2 sessions on Thursday. Now he or she won’t be able to do so. So if a car progresses all the way to the final H2 shoot-out lasting 10 minutes, each of the three drivers will have taken part in qualifying. The only stipulation on who is nominated to drive in each of the sessions is in LMGT3, where the mandatory bronze rated driver must take the wheel on Wednesday.

6. No Porsche?

Porsche is absent from the prototype ranks this year after three seasons bidding for that elusive outright 20th Le Mans victory with the 963 LMDh. It didn’t have to be this way. There was a plan for the Proton Competition privateer squad, which ran a 963 in the WEC in 2023-25, to continue with backing from Penske, which would have allowed the US organisation to take up the automatic entry it had garnered for winning the teams’ title in last year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship. All that was required was permission to use the word Porsche in the entry name, something that wasn’t forthcoming from Stuttgart. Series rules required Porsche to be represented as a manufacturer, which ran counter to its decision last summer to quit the WEC at a time of falling sales.

It’s not like the old days when Porsche seemed to be ever-present at or somewhere near the front of the Le Mans grid – even when it looked like it wouldn’t! Think of the 936 Group 6 cars being dusted off and rolled out of the museum at short notice for 1981, or the hurried conception and development of the car correctly known as the Dauer 962 LM Porsche of ’94. Both projects came good and triumphed in June.

No Porsche prototypes this time means fans of the marque only have the Manthey-run 911 GT3 Rs to cheer. They might be hoarse by the end of the race, given the Nürburgring-based team half-owned by Porsche has claimed class victory in each of the first two years of the LMGT3 era. Porsche has a new evolution version of its existing 992-shape GT3 racer for 2026, while Ford and Ferrari have also updated their respective Mustang and 296 racers.

7. It’s just the beginning for Genesis

The number of manufacturers duking it out in Hypercar remains the same as last year despite Porsche’s departure. The arrival of Genesis, the prestige brand of Hyundai, keeps the tally at eight.

Die-hard sports car fans might not regard it as a fair swap, but Genesis means business. It insists it’s in the WEC for the foreseeable future — definitely into the next rules cycle starting in 2030 — and it appears to be doing everything right. The creation of an in-house team based at Paul Ricard and the choice of drivers backs up the perception that it is deadly serious.

The big stories, however, will be next year when Ford and McLaren, two Le Mans-winning manufacturers, arrive with their respective LMDh contenders. That should give us nine manufacturers at the front of the field (new arrivals minus Alpine).

8. LMP2 carries on regardless

Fewer Hypercars on the grid – down three to 18 – means that the LMP2 prototype class provides a slightly bigger proportion of the 62-car field than last year. The entry for a category that has been absent from the full WEC schedule for the past two season stands at 19, two up on last year and well above the 15-car minimum the ACO set when P2 disappeared from the world championship.