COTA Friday Notebook

***The fastest time of the opening day of practice for the Lone Star Le Mans was a 1:52.468 set in Free Practice 2 by Antonio Giovinazzi in the No. 51 Ferrari 499P. That compares to a best Friday time of 1:48.404 on the FIA World Endurance Championship’s previous visit to COTA in 2020, set by Gustavo Menezes in the Rebellion R13-Gibson.

***Daniel Juncadella meanwhile set the pace in LMGT3 in the No. 82 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R with a 2:05.630.

***Juncadella feels the fact that the Z06 GT3.R has raced at COTA with the DXDT team in Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS earlier in the year has given the team a boost. “This event is the first race where can benefit from data from previous events here,” said Juncadella. “I think that gives us a little bit of a head start.”

***Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director Jonathan Diuguid revealed that a bump in Turn 1 caused minor braking issues with the Porsche 963 during last month’s test at COTA. The track has since undergone resurfacing in a number of corners aimed to eliminate several bumpy sections.

***Diuguid told Sportscar365: “I think we had some late front brake locking or braking issues in Turn 1 relative to a big bump that was there, but in general we were pretty happy when we left the test. I think all the track updates can only be positive for us.”

***Harry Tincknell arrived in Austin on Friday straight off a test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with his IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship team, Ford Multimatic Motorsports, prepping for next month’s six-hour Battle on the Bricks.

***Hertz Team JOTA has the chance to wrap up this year’s FIA World Cup for Hypercar Teams this weekend at COTA. A win for the No. 12 Porsche 963 shared by Callum Ilott, Norman Nato and Will Stevens would be enough to clinch the title if neither the No. 99 Proton Competition Porsche nor the No. 63 AF Corse Ferrari 499P finishes second.

***AF Corse driver Robert Shwartzman however says he isn’t ready to throw in the towel in the fight against JOTA. “For sure we want to catch up,” he told Sportscar365. “It’s a bit far, but anything can happen in these last three rounds, so who knows.

***Shwartzman wouldn’t be drawn when asked about his 2025 plans, amid media reports strongly linking him to a seat in the NTT IndyCar Series with Prema Racing. “We’ll see at the end of the year what will be the options and what the future looks like,” he said. “Even recently [at the Dutch Grand Prix] the chance to do a Free Practice session in F1 popped up [with Sauber], and that was a good experience, so let’s see.”

***Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury revealed that the team’s No. 7 GR010 Hybrid suffered chassis damage in last month’s Hypercar test at COTA after spinning and hitting the pyramid kerbs at Turns 4, 5 and 6. The car had to be flown back to the team’s Cologne headquarters to be fitted with a new tub before being sent back to Austin for this weekend’s race.

***Floury wouldn’t give away who was responsible for the spin, other than it was a member of the No. 8 car crew, with Toyota opting to run one car at a time in the test.

***Mike Conway is celebrating his 10th anniversary as a Toyota driver this weekend, having made his race debut at COTA back in 2014 alongside Alexander Wurz and Stephane Sarrazin as a stand-in for Kazuki Nakajima.

***Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie says the brand is “confident and excited” about reserve driver Malthe Jakobsen stepping up to a race seat in 2025. “We think he is ready,” said Jansonnie. “He is very motivated, working very hard. He has had quite a lot of time in the car [testing]. He is working a lot with us in the simulator as well and he is very good at that. He knows the car and the systems very well.”

***Jansonnie says Peugeot must now decide on a new reserve driver for next season, with Stellantis Motorsport junior driver Nico Pino among the candidates. “We have options with Stellantis,” he said. “We are trying to make some synergies between Formula E and what we do in the WEC. But we are not at the stage [of deciding] yet.”

***Jansonnie clarified that there are unlikely to be any further changes to Peugeot’s driver lineup for 2025 with Jakobsen replacing newly-signed Porsche factory driver Nico Mueller. On whether there could be a reshuffle of the driver crews, he added: “It’s a bit early to tell. We can reshuffle or just replace [Mueller], everything is open.”

***Despite Manthey PureRxcing’s healthy 25-point advantage in the LMGT3 standings, Klaus Bachler remains vigilant about the team’s position in the remaining races. “We’ve seen how quickly it can go,” he told Sportscar365. “The best example was 24 Hours of Le Mans. After 17 hours we were leading, we had an issue and we barely scored two points. Of course we have a gap, but we have to work hard, stay focused and also need to be lucky. And then hopefully we have in the end the chance to win it.”

***Heart of Racing Team driver Alex Riberas believes track evolution will be “a game changer” as the newly resurfaced areas of the circuit rubber up throughout the weekend. “That’s probably one of the big challenges of this weekend, that the track is going to evolve,” Riberas told Sportscar365. “So that means that potentially you might have a really good car on Friday that is not so good anymore on Sunday.”

***Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle said it hasn’t yet been determined how many 963s will be on the WEC grid next year, amid ongoing talks with customer teams, including the possibility of Proton Competition expanding to a two-car Hypercar outfit.

***Kuratle told Sportscar365: “We are talking to customers but there’s nothing fixed yet. There’s not a huge market. There’s not many people around who can or want to operate something like this and bring up all of the costs.”

***Heart of Racing boss Ian James revealed that the Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH has broken the 6,000km barrier in testing as the team gears up for its two-car Hypercar assault in 2025. “We’ve got a mountain to climb with the head start the other manufacturers have,” said James. “We haven’t been at any tracks where Hypercars currently run, so pace-wise we have no idea, but we are meeting our internal goals.”

John Dagys & Davey Euwema contributed to this report