COTA Saturday Notebook

Photo: John Dagys

***Ferrari maintained its undefeated Hypercar pole streak at Circuit of The Americas on Saturday, with Antonio Giovinazzi scoring his second top qualifying run in the last three years for the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Lone Star Le Mans event. Robert Kubica put the satellite AF Corse Ferrari 499P on pole last year.

***It came in a dead heat in Hyperpole, with both Giovinazzi and the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac V-Series.R of Jack Aitken both setting identical 1:52.455 lap times, although the Italian was credited with pole because of setting it first.

***While it marked the first time in Hypercar history, qualifying for the 6 Hours of Shanghai in 2014 also produced a dead heat, with the No. 14 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Romain Dumas and Neel Jani combining for a 1:48.300 lap average, the same as Sebastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson in the No. 8 Toyota TS040 Hybrid back in the day of two-driver average qualifying.

***Aitken revealed it was his second qualifying dead heat in his career, the first one coming in a Formula Renault 2.0 Alps Series event at Imola in 2015 when he set the identical lap to what he remembers as the late Anthoine Hubert. “But I was on the right side of it that time,” Aitken told Sportscar365.

***Giovinazzi said he didn’t know Aitken had set an identical time until his engineer informed him while “almost” in pit lane. “I knew I was on pole but I didn’t know how much of a gap it was,” he said. “I was lucky on that but when everything is together there needs to be some luck and today was the day. Hopefully tomorrow we can have a good day for the race.”

***Aitken admitted he didn’t expect to be fighting for pole. He revealed that a second push lap ultimately didn’t factor in after having a temporary loss of power but said it would have “very unlikely” been an improvement. “I had no idea,” he said about his dead heat lap. “I did the lap and I was like, ‘That probably put us from P5 to P3 or P4 or something. I found a tenth, that was worth something.’ In hindsight, I’m a bit gutted.”

***Giovinazzi admitted his pole-winning lap was “not the best.” He said: “I was not really happy with the car as I was in qualifying. But it was enough to put the car on pole. All the cars didn’t improve in Hyperpole. That’s why I think it was something different in the wind or whatever.”

***Aitken added: “You saw a lot of people not put their best laps together. Of course if I look back at the lap, there’s countless places where I could have improved it a little. But it was a pretty good lap and a pretty good quali. I’m happy.” When asked on Cadillac’s strategy for the race, Aitken said: “I think we’ll start with singles and see how we feel. That’s part of tonight’s discussion.”

***Four different Hypercar manufacturers (Ferrari, Cadillac, Alpine, Aston Martin) were separated by less than 0.050 seconds in Hyperpole, in what’s believed to be a record.

***Aston Martin, meanwhile, became the first LMGT3 manufacturer to claim three consecutive class poles, a streak that dates back to the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Mattia Drudi (No. 27), prior to consecutive poles for the No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo with Kobe Pauwels (Sao Paulo) and Eduardo Barrichello (COTA).

***Barrichello lost his ultimate fastest time in Hyperpole, a 2:05.103, due to a track limits violation in Turn 19. However, the Brazilian’s second-best lap, a 2:05.160, was still good enough for pole. It marked a record-extending 73rd WEC class pole for Aston Martin and the first front-row lockout in LMGT3 since last year’s COTA race when Proton Competition put both of its Ford Mustang GT3s on the front row.

***Toyota Racing technical director David Floury had mixed views on the team’s qualifying performance as the pair of TR010 Hybrids will start seventh and ninth, believing that fifth or sixth “looked potentially feasible.” He added: “We did not exactly put everything together but P1-P4 was not an option for us. You can be a bit disappointed to be P7 and P9 but, on the other hand, we’ve not been in such a good position in qualifying since Imola.”

***Another team with mixed views on qualifying was the Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie outfit. Having topped FP2 and FP3, Harry Tincknell ended up fourth in the No. 007 machine, but just 0.05 seconds adrift of pole. “It’s gutting to be so near and yet so far,” he said. “We know the others maybe keep their powder slightly more dry than us in free practice but nevertheless to be really competitive in qualifying was strong.”

***However, Marco Sorensen in the sister No. 009 car was slowest of all 17 Hypercars in the first qualifying segment after lamenting car tweaks that featured “quite a big change that shouldn’t have been on there,” having been optimistic after practice.

***Both Genesis GMR-001s made Hyperpole for the second time after also doing so at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but team principal Cyril Abiteboul was “disappointed” to only be eighth and tenth. Having tested at COTA in July, he said: “We felt we had an opportunity to shine here.” He added that one-lap pace is traditionally a strong suit for the rookie squad as the “lack of maturity on the systems side doesn’t hurt so bad.”

***BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos admitted they didn’t expect the pair of Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8s to challenge for pole, on the heels of its second victory of the season last time out at Interlagos, having largely focused on race pace in Free Practice. The cars will start 11th and 13th. “I think the starting position is not the most important one,” he told Sportscar365. “But still, you want to always have a quick car and want to be in front. This is what we missed out, so now we have to do some homework and hope that we have a good race tomorrow.”

***He indicated that cooler temperatures on race day could result in the team using Michelin’s Medium Pilot Sport Endurance compound instead of the Hard. “It will be dependent on the temperature tomorrow,” he said. “At the moment it looks like it will be cooler. So it could well be also that it’s Medium.”

***American WEC rookie Gray Newell is back on familiar territory at COTA this weekend but says it has been “more challenging” than he thought it’d be competing at the track. “It’s an interesting quirk of my driving,” the Heart of Racing LMGT3 driver said. “Not having done this for very long, I’ve built a bank of muscle memory that has actually been holding me back. In a way, I find myself somewhat disadvantaged by the fact I’ve been here before, which sounds silly but the guys are doing a really good job coaching me.”

***Newell incurred eight track-limits offenses in Friday’s opening practice session having been caught out by the different “brutal” rules compared to his previous COTA races in SRO America series, but avoided a substantial penalty.

***He explained: “I was getting them all on the exit of Turn 9 because SRO doesn’t do track limits there and they only told me one and I thought it was on the apex of the corner so I just kept doing it over and over again. The stewards were not particularly happy with me but they had mercy and we didn’t get like 25 minutes of penalties — with the caveat I couldn’t do track limits anymore.”

***The Russian flag has appeared on a WEC car for the first time in seven years following the FIA World Motor Sport Council’s decision to lift the ban on drivers competing under the Russian or Belarusian flags following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

***The No. 91 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo now features the Russian flag for Timur Boguslavskiy, who had previously raced under a neutral flag. The last Russian driver to have raced in the series prior to the beginning of the Ukraine war was Egor Orudzhev in 2019 at the wheel of a Ginetta G60-LT-P1 AER.

***Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO driver Darren Leung is seeking to make it two consecutive wins at COTA in two different GT3 machines after triumphing last year aboard a United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3 Evo. “It was a bit of a godsend that we had the rain come — it kind of meant I was able to hang it out and give the car over in the lead, which was great,” he reflected to Sportscar365. “Hopefully there’s a bit more rain this year to spice it up — we probably do need a bit.”

***It has been a tough WEC season so far for Leung, Augusto Farfus and Sean Gelael aboard the No. 32 BMW with a best result of fifth in LMGT3. Leung described Austin as “probably the best place to have a post-win after party” and thinks the WRT crew “potentially have a shot” at success.

***A number of notable figures in the U.S. motorsport industry have been spotted in the paddock this weekend, including former longtime CART turned NASCAR team owner Cal Wells, who is now the CEO of the Jimmie Johnson co-owned Legacy Motor Club. The team has a shared interest with JOTA Sport, with Knighthead Capital Management having stakes in both operations.

***PREMA USA CEO Piers Phillips and the team’s operations manager Graham Quinn made a visit on Friday for meetings, with the former IndyCar squad understood to still be retaining a number of full-time staff in Indianapolis.

***IMSA President John Doonan is in attendance, in his capacity as the sanctioning body for Mustang Challenge North America, which closes out its season this weekend, along with IMSA’s close ties with the ACO as work continues towards confirming details on the converged top-class technical ruleset for 2030.

***Former GM sports car program manager Laura Wontrop Klauser is here working as an ambassador for the WEC in assisting with events, logistics and promotions, including at-track student engineering events, while Risi Competizione team owner Giuseppe Risi is also on-site.

***The Ford Raptor T1+, which scored a double podium in this year’s Dakar Rally, will be leading the WEC’s ‘Lap of Honor’ during pre-race ceremonies tomorrow, with Logan Sargeant at the wheel. The M-Sport-built off-road race car has been on display in the paddock this weekend.

***NBA Hall of Famer Chris Bosh, who played for both the Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat, will serve as the race’s official starter and wave the green flag to signal the cars off the grid tomorrow.

***The 6 Hours of COTA gets underway Sunday at 1 p.m. CST, with coverage on the FIAWEC+ App globally beginning at 12:25 p.m. MotorTrend and HBO Max will carry coverage in the U.S., with Eurosport and TNT Sports in Europe and the UK, respectively and Stan Sport in Australia.

***Anthony Davidson returns to the world feed broadcast team, alongside Martin Haven and Graham Goodwin in the booth, with Bruce Jouanny and Shea Adam on pit lane.

***Radio Le Mans’ coverage on RS1 is being spearheaded by John Hindhaugh, who is on-site this weekend, along with Jonny Palmer, while the Speed City Broadcasting crew of Jonathan Green, Jon Massengale and Bob Varsha, plus the addition of Ryan Myrehn, are handling trackside public-address commentary.

Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John