Ferrari Leads Cadillac in Final Spa Practice

Ferrari topped the times in Friday morning’s final practice session ahead of this weekend’s Spa round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, as Antonio Fuoco led the two Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA entries.

In a more or less incident-free 60-minute session, Fuoco set the benchmark time of 2:00.596 on his second representative lap in the No. 50 Ferrari 499P, going almost a full second faster than the best time from Thursday’s running.

Initially, that time was only good enough to top the session by a scant 0.008 seconds from the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Robin Frijns.

However, Frijns’ best lap was later struck from the record, promoting the quicker of the two Cadillac V-Series.Rs, the No. 38 car driven by Earl Bamber, to second on a best lap of 2:00.793, 0.197 seconds slower than Fuoco.

Alex Lynn put the second of the JOTA-run Cadillacs, the No. 12, third, just three hundredths of a second down on the sister car.

Next up was the third-string No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Kubica in fourth, followed by the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Brendon Hartley in fifth.

Peugeot breached the top six with the faster of its two 9X8s, the No. 93 car driven by Jean-Eric Vergne, ahead of Kamui Kobayashi in the No. 7 Toyota and the best of the Porsche 963s, the privateer No. 99 Proton Competition car of Nico Varrone.

Porsche’s fastest works car, the No. 6, was only a lowly 13th, two seconds off the pace with WEC debutant Pascal Wehrlein at the wheel.

The two BMWs both had their respective best laps deleted as a result of speeding in the pit lane — Raffaele Marciello had initially put the No. 15 car sixth — and ended up propping up the Hypercar order in 17th and 18th.

In LMGT3, an early lap of 2:17.831 from Simon Mann in the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 was enough to top the class by a margin of 0.350 seconds.

Second-fastest was the No. 88 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 of Gianmarco Levorato, while Clemens Schmid was third aboard the quicker of the two Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3s, the No. 87 car.

At the very end of the session, the No. 46 Team WRT BMW of Ahmad Al Harthy suffered a high-speed off-track moment through Eau Rouge after encountering the No. 51 Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi, athough the Omani driver made it back to the pits.

Valentino Rossi had put the No. 46 car sixth in class behind the Racing Spirit of Leman Aston Martin and the second of Akkodis ASP Lexuses.

The No. 60 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo that crashed heavily in the hands of Stephen Grove on Thursday afternoon did not turn a lap, but the team is aiming to have the car repaired in time for the start of qualifying.

Qualifying for the 6H Spa begins at 2:40 p.m. local time (8:40 a.m. EST).

RESULTS: Free Practice 3