Ford Hypercar “to hit the track in August”
Ford Racing Hypercar boss Dan Sayers spoke with FIA WEC TV during FP3 this morning, sharing an update on the behind-the-scenes progress made on its 2027 challenger.
“Progress is going well,” he said. “It’s all to schedule at the moment. The powertrain is being tested in the States on the powertrain dyno. We’re mating the hybrid unit with the fired engine, so that is in full development.
“The control software is all being developed in the US by the engineers at Ford in Detroit. All of the CFD was done in conjunction with ORECA and our engineers in Charlotte.
“Everything is on track, and we’re going to hit the track in August.
“This is the first race engine we’ve developed in-house, so the team have done a great job out in the States,” he added, when asked about the car’s Coyote-based engine. “It’s hitting all the targets, which is important. It’ll have to sound American, of course, and it will do. The performance, the mass, the power targets…all of them are being met at the moment.”
He also spoke about the driver market and the work to build up its stable for the programme.
“It’s fairly complex with drivers at the moment,” Sayers admits. “We hope to announce more in Le Mans. It won’t be the complete line-up, but we hope to announce more in Le Mans, and then [more] as soon as we can, in July/August.
Kobayashi: Toyota struggles “not a surprise”
Toyota driver/team principal Kamui Kobayashi expressed his frustration post-Qualifying but admitted the team expected to struggle for outright pace heading into the fight for pole position. Neither Toyota made it to Hyperpole, with the faster TR010 of the two (the #7), nine tenths off. The race presents an opportunity to fight back, but from 12th and 16th on the grid, there’s a lot of work to do tomorrow.
“We’re disappointed. Last race, we won, and here we are last in the group. It’s tough,” he said. “We don’t know about race pace, through the week it’s been off. We haven’t had good speed in any conditions, top speed and Sector 2 as well.
“The race is long, but as a team we have to just maximise any points score we can. We have struggled with the car; tyre management could be better in the race, but we are not too confident. This is not a surprise.”
With no public BoP data to review and rules in place barring competitors from discussing it, one can only infer from his comments that he and the Toyota team feel they have taken a hit on that front from this event.
Fuoco achieved the “maximum” lap time in Hyperpole
Antonio Fuoco was the only Ferrari driver to progress to the Hypercar Hyperpole session today, before setting a 2:01.117, to go eighth and 0.464 off of pole in the #50 499P.
Speaking with DSC after the session, he revealed that he believes he extracted the most from the car during his fastest lap. While it looks, on the face of it, like a tall order to claim a second consecutive 6H Spa win for Ferrari tomorrow, he was pleased with his performance and hasn’t given up hope entirely for tomorrow’s contest.
“I was really happy, as I said to the team on the radio, I left nothing more out there,” he remarked. “It wasn’t enough to fight with others, though. Looking at sectors in FP3, we understood it would be a tough qualifying, and we wouldn’t have a chance to fight for pole. But now we need to focus on tomorrow. It’s going to be tricky to overtake when you don’t have the speed on the straight. But we’ll have to see where we are once we get into the race.”
Stevens: “Happy that I’m disappointed” after P2 performance
Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s Will Stevens made a strong return to qualifying duties in the #12 V-Series.R, with the Briton coming up just 0.043 seconds short of pole position.
“I’m happy that I’m disappointed, because it’s my first qualifying for a long time, so it’s super encouraging that I can already be right at the sharp end,” he told DSC. “Spa, in these cars, low fuel, new tyres, is a cool experience, and honestly I’ve missed doing it.”
As always at Spa, the weather forecast ought to be with a degree of caution, but the current prediction is that the race will take place in the hottest conditions of the weekend.
“I think tomorrow’s going to be quite different,” Stevens said. “Quite a lot hotter, so everyone’s probably given their best educated guess as to what that will bring from a balance point of view.
“I think a big one will be tyre choice, most others have used both compounds during practice, we haven’t. The first time we were on the mediums was in Hyperpole.
“I think we feel like we’ve got good knowledge of the tyres, we were confident enough to make those decisions in practice going towards the race. I think you’ll see a lot of different tyre strategies tomorrow, which is cool, and hopefully we’ll be on the right one at the right time.”
Milesi: “I think we did the best we can” after Hyperpole near-miss
Alpine Endurance Team put together its best qualifying performance to date, with its pair of A424s locking out the second row of the grid.
“It was a really good qualifying,” Charles Milesi, who topped qualifying before finishing third in Hyperpole, told DSC. “I’m a bit disappointed to miss the pole.”
In Hyperpole, the Frenchman elected to push one lap earlier than the competition, and also when he had done so in the first part of qualifying. This cost him time in the first sector due to lower tyre temperature, but minimised any drop off in grip at the end of the lap.
“I think we put a lot of energy in the tyres on the out lap, and this was the way to do it if we wanted to maximise everything,” he explained.
“I think it was a good call, because if I did a second prep lap, I might’ve started to lose grip at the end of the lap. It’s always a compromise with these tyres when you don’t have any heated blankets, and I think we did the best we can.”
Despite the strong qualifying, Milesi is quick to downplay the importance of starting position this weekend compared to Imola.
“Track position will be less important, as deg is a bit more important, and the tow can be a bit more important,” he said.
“I think we have good pace, also in race pace, and we know that the Peugeot has a bit of deg in the race, so it will be interesting to see.”
New Michelin rubber suiting the Valkyrie
Aston Martin THOR Team’s Harry Tincknell is optimistic entering tomorrow’s race, following a strong qualifying from the team.
The Briton qualified seventh in the #007 Valkyrie, one place behind teammate Marco Sørensen in the #009 entry.
“It’s nice to have both cars in Hyperpole,” he said. “Sixth and seventh on the grid.”
“We were maybe hopeful we could have been even higher. I think if we could have got the fronts and the rears in at the same time, it was possible to be MVP three before. We always race better than the qualifying. It’s been the case of the Valkyrie in every single race it has done.”
Alongside the work that the Heart of Racing has made with the Valkyrie over the off-season, Tincknell also highlighted the change to the updated 2026-spec Michelin tyres as something which has helped Aston Martin progress.
“These new tyres, they suit our car more because they have more bite on the front, and our car is always a bit light on rotation,” he explained.
and actually our car, it moves the tire up. Not great, but then the entire last Okay, so again, it’s slightly more to the front than everyone else, because we’re oversteer as the trappers, we keep our rear tyres better.
The 34-year-old is hoping for warmer conditions tomorrow, believing that they will play into the strengths of the Aston Martin.
“It will help warm the tyres up,” he stated. “Tyre warm up, especially on the medium, is probably one of our biggest weaknesses with the car, so the hotter the ambient, the easier that will be for us.
“It will make the race more demanding on tyre wear, which has been one of our strengths, and we’ve seen that this weekend in the long run pace, so the hotter the better.”
Genesis focused on clean race after “good step” in qualifying
Mathieu Jaminet qualified a surprise 14th in the #19 Genesis Magma Racing GMR-001, claiming two major scalps in the forms of the top two cars in the championship, as the Korean marque climbed off the back row of the Hypercar grid on just its second start.
“I think we made quite a good step going into qualifying from Free Practice, I was not really comfortable until then,” Jaminet admitted.
“I felt much better in quali. I had an issue here and there and made a mistake that cost us a few spots. We could have been close to make the cut to Hyperpole with the [optimal] sectors, but, I really had fun behind the wheel.
“It really felt like we made a step to Imola, and it’s good that we finally beat some cars, and both cars are actually the really strong ones at the top of the class.”
Given the natural focus on developing a new car, Genesis has not dedicated the same amount of time as its rivals to qualifying simulations, something that has likely emphasised its pace deficit to the competition.
“We’ve been focused on reliability so far to make sure the car is running safe and long, and this is still our main priority,” he explained.
“But since the season has started, we really start to explore the setup, and also, as drivers, to do quali we start to discover some new tricks in how the car feels It’s still very new to us, and I think we’ll only get better and better for the year.”
Looking to tomorrow, and it’s clear that this focus on reliability carries through to the race.
“The first target is to finish the race and have a clean one” Jaminet confirmed.
“In Imola, we arrived prepared, but we had this small thing with the sensor. It’s still very early days, so we have to be humble about the approach, and first try to have a clean race with the two cars.
“If the pace is not bad, and we can stay on the lead lap as long as we can and fight some other cars we will try. We’ll do our best to have some fun out there, make some fights and enjoy the race.”
Van Rompuy focused on the “larger picture”
Tom van Rompuy will start his home race from the front in LMGT3, after his co-driver in the #78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus RC F LMGT3, Hadrien David, claimed pole position in Hyperpole.
This came about despite a nervous end to qualifying for the French outfit, with van Rompuy spending the final minutes sitting on the hot seat in 10th, as his Bronze-rated peers tried, and ultimately failed, to best his time.
“We didn’t have the best start yesterday, but we kept improving,” he said.
“The first part of qualifying was not my best ever. I was struggling a bit on my side, so I was happy that I could bring it into Hyperpole for my teammate.”
Looking to tomorrow, the Belgian is determined not to get carried away early on, and instead focus on delivery the strongest performance possible across six hours.
“I think the keys for the race here are to stay clean, to not have any penalties, and to take care of the tyres, especially for us in the Lexus,” he stated.
“So thinking on the longer picture, not only trying to stay ahead, but just have a constant rhythm. Obviously, we’ll try to stay ahead as long as possible, but I think we have to see it over six hours and not try to be the best in the first stint or the second stint, but try to bring home a good result with all three of us.”
West positive despite difficult practice for Garage 59
After its fairytale start at Imola, Garage 59 has had a much tougher time of things so far at Spa-Francorchamps, with neither of its McLaren LMGT3 Evos progressing to Hyperpole.
Both cars had issues during yesterday’s Free Practice, yet despite this, Alexander West still rallied for 11th in qualifying aboard the #58 McLaren, coming up just short of eliminating the eventual pole-sitting #78 Lexus.
“We worked through a lot of issues with the car in Free Practice 2, and I had two full course yellows in my FP3 qualifying run, so we weren’t that prepared,” West admitted to DSC.
Despite this, West is optimistic heading into tomorrow’s race, with the belief that they’ve now got the McLaren in a good place.
“I think we have a solid car,” he said. “We’ve got a good team and I’ve got two good drivers. My job is just to deliver the car back in one piece, in a reasonable position, and let them do their thing. It’s a matter of not taking any risks, and then we have to see how the tyre deg is.”
