Imola Friday Notebook

***Alpine driver Charles Milesi set the benchmark time on the opening day of practice for the 6 Hours of Imola, posting a 1:30.898 at the wheel of the No. 35 A424 — beating the Prologue benchmark of 1:31.177 laid down by Ferrari driver Antonio Fuoco.

***Milesi’s chart-topping lap also bested the equivalent lap set at Imola on Friday last year, a 1:31.040, set by both Antonio Giovinazzi and Dries Vanthoor. The best lap in LMGT3, meanwhile, a 1:42.081 set by Kobe Pauwels, compares favorably to Clemens Schmid’s 2025 benchmark of 1:42.944.

***Genesis Magma Racing ended the first official day of track action 1.389 seconds off the pace, making it the most impressive new Hypercar entrant by that metric of recent times. By way of comparison, the Aston Martin Valkyrie was 2.493 seconds down after one day of practice last year, while in 2024, Lamborghini, Alpine and BMW trailed the leaders by 1.910, 2.266 and 2.528 seconds respectively.

***Genesis team principal Cyril Abiteboul said he is “not disappointed” by the fact the two GMR-001s finished at the bottom of the Hypercar timesheets. “We know we missed out from the mileage of Qatar [the postponed season opener] so we’re trying to catch up on that,” he said. “Honestly, we’re not paying too much attention to the lap time at this time, it’s all about reliability and good execution and so far they’ve been very good.”

***Abiteboul also confirmed that Genesis will continue to field three drivers per car for the second round of the season at Spa, but that could change later in the year. “Clearly before Le Mans we need to give maximum track time and driver familiarization to everyone because they will all be driving at Le Mans,” he explained.

***Toyota Racing technical director David Floury said he is not getting “too excited” about the best of the upgraded TR010 Hybrids setting the second-fastest time of the day at Imola in the hands of Nyck de Vries, 0.114 seconds slower than Milesi.

***Floury told reporters: “We are still learning a lot of about the car and the tires. We made some progress but there’s still a long way to go. These are new tire runs [that set the order in FP2] but what matters is race pace. Here track position is quite important, but our focus is still on trying to optimize the race pace.”

***Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG driver Rui Andrade was handed a reprimand for making contact with the Team WRT BMW of Darren Leung at the Variante Alta chicane in FP1. While Andrade hit Leung from behind, a stewards’ report stated neither driver held the other fully responsible, describing it instead as a “misunderstanding”.

***Alpine has split with technical director Fabrice Roussel on the eve of the new season, with Roussel having announced his departure “following recent adjustments to the Alpine Endurance program and its project governance”. Roussel had joined the team last October having previously worked as a race engineer for Porsche in Formula E, and also has prior WEC experience as an engineer for the Rebellion LMP1 and Manor LMP2 squads.

***Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA is still using its same two chassis from last year at present, just with the latest Evo upgrades, but that will soon change. “New chassis come online for Spa to rollout for Le Mans, which is why the guys were in Varano rolling out the new chassis last week,” explained JOTA co-founder Sam Hignett.

***Cadillac driver Will Stevens said after setting the fourth-fastest time in FP1 at Imola that he feels JOTA has made progress towards conquering what has traditionally been one of its weakest venues.

***Stevens said: “Looking at the last two years, it’s no secret that Imola has not necessarily suited JOTA as a team, even with the Porsche. But I think we learned a lot from last year, and from the work going on with the other Cadillac teams in IMSA, especially at Sebring, which is more similar to here in terms of the track nature and what you need. We started the week in a reasonably good way and we feel better than we did this time last year.”

***Injured TF Sport Corvette LMGT3 regular Ben Keating is on-site at Imola this weekend, with the team publishing a video message from the Texan driver on social media. Keating is set to return to the cockpit of the No. 33 car in time for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

***ACO deputy director of competition Bruno Famin revealed further details regarding this year’s Balance of Performance system to French media. Famin was quoted by Endurance24 saying that the rolling BoP will not necessarily be calculated using the same races for each car.

***Famin said: “There is quite a lot of work being done to ‘treat’ the data in a way to preserve as many laps that are representative of performance as possible… so we are disregarding races that are not representative and using the best ones. We are considering a range of races that are not necessarily the same for each constructor. This is why we are not saying which races are considered and how many.”

***Peugeot Sport team principal Emmanuel Esnault revealed that the team’s new development driver Doriane Pin has already done her first simulator session as she builds towards a first outing in the 9X8 Hypercar in this year’s end-of-season rookie test in Bahrain.

***Esnault said of Pin: “She will be with the team [on-site] at Spa. It’s for her to discover the competitive element of the team, the people the working procedures. These are complex cars so you have to digest a lot of things. Between now and the rookie test, and after, a lot of things will happen. There are many milestones on our side and on her side to check if we change the plan. But she is definitely part of the team.”

***Ferrari head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo shed further light on the brand’s decision to test at Imola at the end of March after its planned Bahrain test was cancelled amid the outbreak of the U.S./Israel-Iran conflict.

***Cannizzo said: “The real reason [we chose Imola] is that the track was available! At the same time, we knew the weather would be good for testing and it was a chance to test the Soft [Michelin] compound. We were also able to confirm the specific set-up because Imola has always matched our car very well and it was important to understand the new tires and the new aero were behaving in the same way.”

***While Cannizzo acknowledged Imola as an “outlier” on the current WEC calendar in terms of its setup demands, he added that “we have developed the ability to test anywhere and translate this into relevant information for the track we have to race.”

***A total of 17 cars participated in practice for the Le Mans Legends support series on Friday, of which 15 took part in qualifying. The field includes a quartet of Peugeot 908s (two V12-powered HDI FAP models and two V8-powered 2011 cars), a Lola Aston Martin DBR1/2 and a Porsche RS Spyder. Qualifying was led by Michel Frey in a Lola B07/18.

***Track action for the 6 Hours of Imola continues on Saturday with third practice at 10:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. EST), with qualifying due to begin at 2:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m. EST).

Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report