The inaugural 6 Hours of Imola was a truly memorable race for fans of the World Endurance Championship, the on track was good, the crowd was huge and the final results sheet was littered with surprises.
The 2024 season feels truly underway now, and it’s heating up. Spa is just around the corner, which means Le Mans is too. Strolling the paddock now is a totally different experience from a few years ago, with significant storylines seemingly in every garage.
So what will we remember when we look back on this event in the weeks and months to come?
Ferrari’s Hypercar team has room for improvement
There’s no skirting around it, Ferrari’s strategic error was the story of the weekend. It served as a timely reminder that this team is still a work in progress.
The 499Ps had the pace in dry conditions to score a first win on home soil, something that was evident in the body language displayed by members of the team for most of the weekend. Through practice, qualifying and into the second half of the race, this was clearly Ferrari’s to lose. Yet to the surprise of many, it did.
When the track conditions quickly changed with a rain shower in the fourth hour of the race – and it became a major test of strategic nous as well as speed – the wily old fox that is Toyota Gazoo Racing took advantage. The Toyota team has been downbeat since the Prologue, arguably excessively so, but it is Hypercar Manufacturer World Champion for a reason. It should never be counted out.
So what about Ferrari? With fourth and seventh-place finishes for its works 499Ps, the Ferrari Hypercar team showed once again that it is not yet the finished article. This is a programme that (understandably) has a high level of expectation placed on it and just one win show for its efforts.
Giuliano Salvi, the team’s sportscar race and testing manager, was humble in the team’s post-race technical briefing. He was immediately asked to explain the reasoning behind its decision to stay on slicks for too long while the rest of the Hypercar field switched to wets. And he didn’t hold back.
“The information we had on our side was obviously wrong,” he said. “We thought the weather would be just temporary.
“We need to revise our chain of communication, for sure. But our strategy is not to finger-point.
“Sometimes you look at the (weather) radar and you think it should rain and it doesn’t, and you stop relying on the signal. We thought it was the kind of situation where you don’t need to rely on the radar too much. We misjudged the situation.”
In addition to misreading the conditions, he pointed out that in hindsight, the team also would have been better off hedging its bets by splitting the strategy between its cars.
However, while this result will come as a huge disappointment to the team and the Tifosi trackside that stuck around in the rain until the end of the race, there is no reason to panic.
From a bird’s eye view, this was a significantly better weekend than the one in Qatar, where it didn’t contend at all. It must also be said that like every other factory in the class, Ferrari’s management will have known going into the season that good days and bad days are to be expected. It certainly wasn’t the only OEM searching left disappointed by the result on Sunday…
Therefore, its driver crews and staff will surely head to Spa safe in the knowledge that the team has all the right ingredients to win races. The 499P is top-notch, possessing a lethal combination of speed and reliability. Its driver roster and technical team are world-class too. It just needs to put it all together and learn from strategic errors like this one to return to winning ways.
Imola lives up to expectations
As an event, the 6 Hours of Imola is one we will look back on for a long time.
The circuit itself is a star, we knew that going in. It oozes character, it’s old school and it’s located in a beautiful region littered with spectacular vistas.
But the 6 Hours of Imola was more than simply a WEC race on the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, it felt like a major race meeting for the teams and the passionate local fanbase.
The official attendance figure over three days was reported as 73,600. Sometimes you hear a number after a race and put it down to creative mathematics. Other times, like Sunday, you believe it.
The circuit was rammed, the infield fan area was well-presented and the grandstands were well-filled for the entire race, even after the rain came.
Sure, it helped that Ferrari had three Hypercars on the grid and Valentino Rossi was racing in LMGT3. But the circuit drew such a big crowd because it’s a very spectator-friendly venue, the event was promoted so well and tickets were not priced too high.
All in all, this was a hugely impressive debut for Imola on the WEC calendar. It was such a success that it’s hard to imagine a world in which the powers that be take it off the calendar next season.
It’s too early to judge the new 9X8
Ahead of the track action this weekend there was, quite rightly, a great deal of attention paid to Peugeot’s new 9X8s.
The redesign of its Hypercar challenger brings with it so much promise. It’s being touted as confidence-inspiring for drivers, better on tyre life, faster in a straight line and less sensitive to bumpy track surfaces. It was disappointing then, to walk away from the paddock on Sunday night having learned very little from its first WEC outing.
The team’s performance did produce a milestone result, with the #93 finishing in the points on the car’s debut. But the #94’s afternoon was ruined in the Turn 2 pile-up at the start and the #93, despite finishing in the top half, failed to feature at the sharp end in a race that was held in conditions far from ideal for a team with a new car.
Driver Stoffel Vandoorne also pointed out after Qualifying that the Bop – sorry, the “weight and power numbers” – were a hindrance too.
The good news is Peugeot’s drivers have all sung the car’s praises after its test programme. They expect it to be a step in the right direction. The bad news is that we have to wait until next month to see it in action again.
Hopefully Spa will give us more of an indication of where Peugeot’s programme stands ahead of its home race…
It’s always sunny there, right?
LMGT3 still has more to give
The LMGT3 class after two races in the FIA WEC has been somewhat hard to evaluate.
On one hand, seeing this level of variety in a WEC GT field is truly refreshing, and the teams on the entry are all top-notch. On the other, neither race reached a crescendo and showcased what makes GT3 racing truly special – close, action-packed racing with spectacular-looking production-based cars.
There are storylines emerging though, and they deserve attention.
For one, Alex Malykhin, as a Bronze, is a real talent. There are debates aplenty up and down the pit lane about his ranking but the fact of the matter is, his ranking is his ranking, he’s quick, and it’s great to see him in this field as well as World Challenge Europe’s.
His team Pure Rxcing, partnered with Manthey, is a force too. Like Ferrari, it would likely have won the race had it made a different decision regarding tyre choice during the race. Interestingly, Ferrari faltered in Hypercar because it stayed on slicks while Pure Rxcing lost out in LMGT3 because it changed to wets!
That leads us nicely to the second strand: WRT, and its superb performance.
In Vincent Vosse’s garages, expectations are usually sky-high. This is very much the case for its WEC LMGT3 effort with the M4, which features two standout crews. Hence it was surprising that off the bat in March it couldn’t find a way to challenge Pure Rxcing.
On this occasion though, its strategy of staying on slicks for the entire race proved to be a masterstroke, setting up a dominant 1-2 finish. It breathed early life into the title race and set things up nicely for its home race next month.
What of the rest of the field? Here are some observations:
- The new Aston Martin Vantage continues to look the part and according to Ian James was a joy to drive on what is an extremely technical circuit. This bodes well for the rest of the season.
- United Autosports is taking strides every time it leaves pit lane. Richard Dean and co seem far more in tune with the McLaren GT3 EVO, and crucially, ahead of the toughest stretch of the schedule.
- Vista AF Corse’s Bronze drivers appear quick enough to win the team races. Thomas Flohr continues to show form in this area (it’s a pity he made a costly error in the race, ending up in the gravel) and Francois Heriau was head-turning in the first stint.
- It was a better weekend for AKKODIS ASP, but Jerome Policand’s team and its driver clearly need more time to unlock the performance of the Lexus. It may be ancient now in GT3 terms, but this is a car that continues to win big in the hands of Vasser Sullivan in IMSA. We haven’t seen the best of it in WEC yet.
- Finally, Proton’s Mustang GT3s… We’re still waiting to see what they’re capable of after yet another race for Ford’s new challenger impacted by bodywork coming loose.
