Spa Friday Notebook

Photo: Javier Jimenez/DPPI

***Antonio Fuoco scored Ferrari’s seventh outright pole position in the FIA World Endurance Championship in Friday’s Hyperpole session at Spa, as well as the Italian marque’s third in a row, and his fourth personally.

***On his pole lap, Fuoco said: “Like last year, we were able to manage the warm-up of the tires a bit better, I think that is where we made the difference with the others. The preparation was quite clear with the out lap and the warm-up lap, and I put a good lap together, which was not easy in these conditions as we had only one push lap available.”

***As well as the much-discussed resurfacing that has taken place at Spa since last year’s race, Fuoco credited the lower temperatures for the considerable jump in lap times since 2024, also pointing out that the 2023 pole time of 2:00.812 was considerable quicker than last year’s ultimately disallowed benchmark of 2:02.600.

***Fuoco was also asked about the pressure to perform in qualifying at Spa after a series of track limits violations in qualifying at the previous round at Imola left him last in the Hypercar order. “To be honest, this is what I love about this job,” said Fuoco. “At Imola the mistake cost us quite a lot and for sure the pressure was on my shoulders, but I think I showed that even under pressure it doesn’t make any difference.”

***Lexus became the eighth different manufacturer to score pole in LMGT3 courtesy of Finn Gehrsitz’s best lap in the No. 78 Akkodis ASP entry. It leaves only Ford and new-for-2025 marque Mercedes-AMG to take a pole since the inception of the category last year.

***Commenting on Gehrsitz’s pole, ASP boss Jerome Policand paid tribute to both his own team and Toyota for its help improving the RC F GT3’s potential. “Last year it was a dream to reach this championship, but a bit of a nightmare also because we were last in the few races,” he said. “But we never gave up. Thanks to TGR for helping us develop this car, which is different from the IMSA car. We had some flashes of speed at the end of the year, and during the winter we tried to work on our weak points and it paid off.”

***Gehrsitz also became the first German pole-winner in any class since Christian Ried at Spa in 2020 at the wheel of a Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche in GTE-Am.

***On the other side of the ASP garage, Clemens Schmid did not set a lap in Hyperpole, returning to the pits on his third lap, leaving the No. 87 car tenth on the grid.

***Policand told Sportscar365: “The car was running perfectly in [first] qualifying, but Clemens said he felt something strange on the balance of the car when he left the pits, especially at the front end. He didn’t know exactly what it was. At Spa you have Eau Rouge and Blanchimont, so if you’re not sure the car is 100 percent safe, there is no point to push and maybe to have a failure, so we preferred to stop the car.”

***Stoffel Vandoorne was happy with fourth place in Hyperpole aboard the No. 93 Peugeot 9X8, best of the rest behind the Ferraris, noting that he was “on the back foot” heading into qualifying after a roll bar issue cost the team track time during final practice.

***Vandoorne said: “That’s why I barely just made it through in the first part of qualifying. But then I knew kind of exactly what to do in Hyperpole to extract the lap time. That’s where I managed to get everything working, put everything together and deliver the lap that we needed.”

***Although he eventually qualified sixth, Mick Schumacher’s run to Hyperpole in the No. 36 Alpine A424 was briefly jeopardized when he had an initial lap time deleted for track limits in the first stage of qualifying.

***The German admitted that it put the pressure on for the remainder of the session, telling Sportscar365: “It just meant that I had to do a clean lap afterwards. Luckily, the tires were still in a good condition, so I was able to not improve my lap, but at least somewhat match it. It was still enough to get into Hyperpole.”

***Stephen Grove attributed his heavy Raidillon crash during Thursday’s second Free Practice session to driver error. The No. 60 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo missed the end of Free Practice 3 by a matter of minutes according to a team spokesperson, but returned to the track for qualifying.

***Grove told Sportscar365: “We had double-stinted tires, we were just pushing through there and we just ran a bit wide, a bit of understeer. We just ran a little bit wide into the marbles and then once that happens, you’re a bit of a passenger.”

***The car that Grove is sharing with son Brenton and Matteo Cairoli this weekend is not the same one that contested the opening WEC rounds at Qatar and Imola, as the team has opted to use its European Le Mans Series chassis for the No. 60 entry at Spa.

***Martin Berry described himself as “super-happy to be here” as he qualified the sister No. 61 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG 15th in his first WEC qualifying outing after taking over from Christian Ried as the squad’s nominated Bronze driver.

***The Australian told Sportscar365: “It’s a bit different from ELMS, which gives you more time to be prepared, whereas here you have to be on it at the beginning, so there’s a bit of an adjustment there. I think we still have work to do, both on the car and myself, but hopefully we can build on this result.”

***Berry clarified that he is set to participate in the remainder of the WEC season, except for the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo, as the Brazilian race clashes with a planned outing in the Fuji round of the GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS for EBM.

***Imola LMGT3 poleman Valentino Rossi said he hopes he and his co-drivers in the No. 46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO can fight for a top-five result at Spa after qualifying ninth and slowest of the cars to set a lap time in Hyperpole.

***Rossi told reporters: “It looks like this track is less competitive for our car than Imola. I have a good feeling with the car, but we are not fast enough. We will work to be constant [in the race] and not lose too much, because last year the tire degradation was a lot. It looks like this year we are a bit better, but we don’t understand by how much.”

***The No. 46 car had a major scare at the end of Friday morning’s third practice session when Ahmad Al Harthy made contact with the No. 51 Ferrari 499P of Alessandro Pier Guidi at the bottom of Eau Rouge, leading to Al Harthy going straight across the grass at the high-speed uphill corner. However, the stewards took no further action on the matter.

***The relevant stewards’ bulletin explained: “The driver of car 46 believed that car 51 would not attempt an overtake at that point, while the driver of car 51 expected car 46 to leave room for the manoeuvre. The stewards determined that the collision resulted from this mutual misunderstanding.”

***Radio Le Mans has confirmed its lineup of broadcasters for next month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, with American announcer Ryan Myrehn joining the team for the French endurance classic for the first time. Myrehn, who has also been active on IMSA Radio this year, joins Jonny Palmer, Bruce Jones, Paul Truswell, Johnny Mowlem, Peter Mackay, Joe Bradley, Nick Daman, Peter Snowdon and John Hindhaugh.

***The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps is due to begin at 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. EDT).

Davey Euwema contributed to this report