WEC- 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps: Hypercars qualifying

The 6 hours of Spa-Francorchamps qualifying started wrongly for Toyota Gazoo Racing with Brendon Hartley crashing his #8 GR010 Hybrid in the Raidillon straight out of the pits on cold tires. The session was animated by Giovinazzi with Ferrari #51 who qualified first at the end of the session until his fastest lap was canceled for track-limits violation. Kamui Kobayashi will start from pole tomorrow at 12:45

Hypercars top 5 qualifying

Tomorrow’s grid of the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps will see Toyota #7 on pole ahead of two Ferrari and two Cadillac. The top 4 are within 0.231 seconds which is promising for the race starting at 12:45. The Cadillac #3 (fifth) and the Porsche #6 (sixth) are within 2 seconds from the benchmark set by Kobayashi. The others are more than 2 seconds slower than Kobayashi in their fastest lap.

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Spa-Francorchamps. After dominating this morning free practice, Kamui Kobayashi qualified for pole with his Toyota GR010 Hybrid #7.

Kamui Kobayashi (Team Principal and driver, car #7): “I was a bit surprised in the end to be on pole after the Ferrari had gone quicker, but I am very happy. The team did a great job and the car felt brilliant. I didn’t have the best preparation because I didn’t get a lap on new tyres in practice, so qualifying was the first time for me. I had to abort my first flying lap because the Ferrari spun which meant the tyres were not in the best condition. Luckily I had no traffic, my lap felt pretty good and it was enough for pole. It has been a very tight fight with Ferrari, but we made it and we are in the best position to start the race. We will fight very hard and hopefully we will stay on top tomorrow.” Source: Toyota Gazoo Racing

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Spa-Francorchamps. Miguel Molina with #50 Ferrari 499P will start from first row as he scored the second fastest lap only 0.024 seconds off Kobayashi.

499P #50 driver MIGUEL MOLINA: “I think today we could have managed to be in pole position, but I got traffic in the last two sectors, but sometimes it happens. In any case, I was really happy with the car and my performance in the qualifying session. The team did an amazing job again. I keep repeating that we are learning a lot, but so far, we are doing a very good job. I'm really happy about the performance, but we keep in mind that the points and race are tomorrow. We are working to get closer to the Toyota, and tomorrow we will have the answer. Here you never know what can happen with the weather in Spa, so even if we expect a dry race, you never know. With my teammates, we will push to get a great result.” Source: Ferrari

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Spa-Francorchamps. Antonio Govinazzi second fastest lap was valid and set him as the third performer of the session.

499P #51 driver ANTONIO GIOVINAZZI: “It has been a rollercoaster qualifying, like the track at Spa. I think I did a very good lap in my last attempt, but unfortunately, I was on gravel, and I lost laptime there. I didn’t gain anything, and I lost my pole position. In the end, in any case, we are P2 and P3. That is very good for Ferrari. Let’s go and have a good race tomorrow. If we’d had a clean session, it would have been better, but we put the car on pole. The laptime was there, but these are the rules, we have to accept it. Tomorrow it will be a long race. At Spa, you never know what the weather will be. Let's hope for a clean race. I’m sure we can get a good result.” Source: Ferrari

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Spa-Francorchamps. Earl Bamber was fourth fastest today with his Cadillac V-Series.R #2. He’ll start from second row.

Bamber: “We’ve been working and working, and I think today was really good with P2 in practice three and not far off the pole. To be honest, we’re building more and more and that is what this team is all about. Again today, two-tenths from pole, now we start to show what we can do. It’s the hard work of the guys between Portugal and now, and we’re not going to stop until we get there.” Source: Cadillac Racing

📷 © Luc Warnotte at Spa-Francorchamps. Sebastien Bourdais was fifth fastest today with his Cadillac V-Series.R #3.

Bourdais: “Obviously, not having any clue of what the balance was going to be, not having actually run that tire before, I think we can be pretty happy with the result. We’ll take a good look at the data and try to make it good for the long runs.” Source: Cadillac Racing

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