Stars on parade at Spa
Felipe Nasr was on social media duty as Porsche revealed its 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans livery at the circuit yesterday. The Brazilian driver will share the third #75 Porsche 963 with Matthieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy.
2016 FIA WEC World Drivers Champion and Le Mans 24 Hours overall winner Marc Lieb was also present for the ‘reveal’ of the new colour scheme. The long-time Porsche Factory Driver now serves as sports communications manager at Porsche.
Elsewhere, reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne was present in the Peugeot TotalEnergies pit during FP3 and qualifying today at his home race. The Belgian ex-F1 star proved a significant draw for an impressive Friday crowd.
🚨Dear fans, if you’re at @circuitspa today, come and meet @svandoorne in our Fan Zone booth, starting 14:45.
See you there,
🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪 pic.twitter.com/uMWIctzioe— Peugeot Sport (@peugeotsport) April 28, 2023
Another Belgian Star, Maxime Martin was also seen in the paddock today, the ex-Aston Martin factory driver rejoining BMW more recently.
And Stig, father of Tom, Blomqvist is also present and watching his son’s progress at United Autosports.
New chassis arrives for #21 AF Corse Ferrari effort
2022 FIA WEC GTE AM racer Christophe Ulrich was spotted in the Spa paddock today, the Swiss Gentleman driver was part of the #21 Ferrari effort last season with his prior seat filled by Stefano Costatini and then Diego Alessi.
The replacement chassis for the #21, damaged beyond repair in Diego Alessi’s clash with AF Corse team-mate Thomas Flöhr on Thursday, arrived at Spa in the late morning today. Reconstruction of the car was well underway by the early evening.
Starting Grid
The full starting grid, with the starting drivers, has been published ahead of the race. The 38 cars will be led across the start line by Mike Conway in the #7 Toyota. Sebastien Buemi meanwhile, has been entrusted to take the start in the sister #8 Toyota from the back of the Hypercar field.
HERTZ Team JOTA keeping expectations realistic
HERTZ Team JOTA is keeping its expectations realistic ahead of its WEC Hypercar debut. The team, which only took delivery of its 963 last week, told DSC it feels that just making the finish will be a significant achievement at this early stage.
JOTA can and should take plenty of positives from the build-up to the race though. Its 963 completed plenty of laps through practice and qualifying without major issues and found pace in qualifying.
“The first days here have been really exciting,” driver Will Stevens said this morning ahead of the race. “We had only a few reliability concerns, which was great. There’s a lot to take in but we are really happy so far.”
The JOTA team will start seventh on the grid after Stevens set an impressive time that was quicker than the Peugeot 9X8s and one of the two Penske-run factory cars.
Corvette hoping to bank points
Corvette Racing feels its outright pace here at Spa will not be enough to score a third consecutive win. Instead, the team hopes to have a strong race and bank as many points as possible to help solidify its position at the top of the GTE Am championship standings ahead of Le Mans.
“45 kilos of ballast (which the car is carrying because of its two wins) is tricky here, it does make a difference to our lap times,” said driver Nico Varrone in conversation with DSC. “The Aston Martins look stronger here, and we expect our other competitors to have a good race.
“Thankfully the ballast gets wiped for Le Mans, so we won’t be at a disadvantage there.”
Giovanazzi pleased with Ferrari pace despite losing Pole
#51 Ferrari AF Corse driver Antonio Giovanazzi says yesterday’s qualifying produced a good result for Ferrari, despite the fact that the team missed out on pole because of an error on his fastest flying lap. Race control deleted Giovanazzi’s hot lap due to a track limits violation, promoting the #7 Toyota to pole after the session ended.
Despite the error, the pace shown by the 499P, he feels, gives the team plenty of confidence for the race.
“It was a rollercoaster qualifying, like the track at Spa,” he said. “I think I did a very good lap in my last attempt, but unfortunately, I was on gravel, and I lost lap time 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.
“If we’d had a clean session, it would have been better, but we put the car on pole. The lap time 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.”
Crowd building
The crowd for today’s six-hour looks set to be head-turning. There were major traffic jams on the roads leading to the circuit, preventing many paddock personnel from arriving on time, hours before the WEC race is set to get underway.
More encouraging is that the crowd looks set to be sizable, even with poor weather today. The thick fog from this morning had mostly passed at the time of writing, but periodic rain showers are expected to impact the race.
The track has been declared wet for the start, following a period of light rain throughout the support races in the build-up.
WEC TV Presenters
The 2023 WEC TV booth presentation team of Martin Haven, Ant Davidson and Graham Goodwin were pictured this morning during their free-to-view FP3 show with somewhat unusual seating arrangements!
Featured image and #21 Ferrari image courtesy of Jakob Ebrey Photography
