Le Mans Thursday Notebook

Photo: WEC

***Ferrari AF Corse broke Toyota Gazoo Racing’s six-year pole-winning streak for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a feat that dated back to Kamui Kobayashi’s qualifying record lap of 3:14.791 in a Toyota GR050 Hybrid that still stands as the quickest lap at Circuit de la Sarthe.

***Antonio Fuoco’s 3:22.982 lap time in the No. 50 Ferrari 499P marked the fastest-ever Hypercar class lap to have been turned at Le Mans. It also marked Ferrari’s second FIA World Endurance Championship pole of the season after Fuoco also took top qualifying honors for the 1000 Miles of Sebring.

***Toyota had been seeking a record seventh consecutive pole that would have put them ahead of Porsche for most consecutive poles in the race.

***Sebastien Bourdais encountered fuel pressure problems prior to the No. 3 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R coming to a stop on the Mulsanne Straight and catching fire. “I just lost fuel pressure, but from the engine side because it kept clearly just injecting fuel somewhere,” he told Sportscar365. “It flooded the car with fuel and it just blew up.”

***Bourdais added that the fire likely inflicted significant damage to the car: “It’s burnt bad, because you can’t get in the engine. You can’t put out the fire because you need to take the rear cell [off] to be able to take the engine deck off. You can’t get the fire out. It slowly burns the car.”

***The No. 13 Tower Motorsports Oreca 07 Gibson returned to the track in Free Practice 3 with a fully rebuilt car around a new tub following Steven Thomas’ accident on Wednesday’s opening session. Ricky Taylor put the car 17th on the time charts with a best lap of 3:38.426.

***The entry will face a three-minute stop-and-hold penalty in the race due to Thomas deemed to have “failed to slow sufficiently” before colliding with Casper Stevenson’s No. 777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GTE, which did not appear in FP3. The spare chassis arrived in Le Mans at 9 a.m. this morning after having two hours of delays through the Eurotunnel, but enough to make tonight’s final one-hour night practice, which gets underway at 10 p.m. CEST.

***Penske’s No. 6 Porsche 963 underwent an engine change following Free Practice 3 due to a cooling issue. The car, which will roll off from ninth on the grid having missed Hyperpole by one position, is expected to final night practice.

***The No. 75 Penske Porsche of Felipe Nasr lost its two quickest laps in Wednesday evening’s qualifying session due to exceeding the maximum released powertrain power limit in Lap 5. Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle explained to Sportscar365 that it was a minor overshoot of the torque sensor.

***Kuratle said: “There’s a rule that says you can go as far and we slightly peaked on the torque sensor. The torque sensor worked, we just exceeded the limits just by a fraction of it. We didn’t do it intentionally but everybody tries to go to the limits.”

***Nasr’s third best lap time, a 3:26.589, was still good enough for eighth and locked the car into Hyperpole.

***Kuratle confirmed the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche had a problem with the master switch, which led to the privateer squad missing the majority of the session. “It’s easy enough to change the part but first of all we had to analyze what it really was and unfortunately we lost a lot of time,” he said. “I feel sorry for the guys there.”

***Racing Team Turkey, meanwhile, lost its Hyperpole place in LMP2 due to a red flag speeding infringement in qualifying, which promoted the Pro-Am subclass pace-setting No. 14 Nielsen Racing Oreca 07 Gibson into the top eight.

***Corvette Racing replaced dozens of parts on its Chevrolet Corvette C8.R following Nico Varrone’s accident on Wednesday afternoon, including the right side suspension, right side brakes, floor, rear facia, rear wing, decklids, seat belts, right side front and rear fender, right side door and right side rocker.

***Nicky Catsburg put in a heroic late series of flying laps to advance the car to Hyperpole that ultimately helped propel co-driver Ben Keating to pole in GTE-Am.

***Toyota Gazoo Racing WEC technical director Pascal Vasselon said they’ve not been entirely happy with the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid since Sunday’s test day, where it struggled for pace. It qualified fifth in the hands of Brendon Hartley. “The alignment is not perfect,” Vasselon said. “On one lap it looks close but on average pace we’re still looking for possible reasons.”

***Frederic Vasseur, team principal of the Scuderia Ferrari F1 team, was present in the Italian marque’s Hypercar garage during Friday’s third Free Practice session. He also visited Peugeot. Alfa Romeo, whose F1 team Vasseur headed before his switch to Ferrari, is part of the same Stellantis group as the French manufacturer.

***Michelin has simplified the names of its slick tire compounds for Hypercar and GTE-Am. From Le Mans onwards, the compounds will be called soft, medium and hard. These replace soft-cold temperature, soft-hot temperature and medium respectively.

***The French supplier has also added compound designation stickers to the Hypercar and GTE-Am tires, in a move designed to make the race easier to follow. In the first three rounds of the WEC season, the tires looked the same regardless of which compound they were.

***Ferrari AF Corse and Floyd Vanwall Racing Team are known to have tested with pre-heated tires during a three-day session at Monza last month that was also attended by Porsche. Ferrari curtailed its running on the final day according to its head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo, who dismissed rumors of an accident for one of the 499Ps.

***Pre-heated Hypercar tires exit the ovens at around 60 to 70 degrees Celsius (140-158 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Michelin’s head of track operations David Sudre. “It will help the drivers, just having the hot tires,” he told Sportscar365. “We are not concerned about the [tire] longevity.”

***Goodyear endurance racing program manager Mike McGregor added that LMP2 teams are exhibiting a much wider starting temperature range of 60 to 90 degrees C (140-194 F).

***The Ferrari 296 GT3 that finished fifth in last weekend’s Paul Ricard 1000km is among the cars on display in Goodyear’s tire fitting compound. It stands alongside Dale Earnhardt’s Wrangler Chevrolet Monte Carlo from the 1984 NASCAR Winston Cup season.

***Forecasts currently call for a chance of rain during the 4 p.m. CEST start on Saturday, which Toyota’s Vasselon said could open up the strategy in Hypercar given the elimination of intermediate tires for this year. Only a single wet weather compound is on offer this season in the WEC.

***Vasselon said: “We have to guess the transition times, which is something we try to do, but it’s not easy because it’s partly a guess. We have to know at what moment we switch from wets to slicks.”

***Toyota, meanwhile, has not run the new-for-2023 Michelin wet-weather tire very much. “We are short experience,” Vasselon said. “They came very late to us. I think it was available in IMSA a bit earlier. It came very late to us and we did not have many opportunities.”

***Vasselon confirmed that Toyota does not have any testing planned for the remainder of the year, outside of the end-of-year Bahrain rookie test, as was the case last season. This is understood to be a budget-related decision by the manufacturer.

***On Wednesday, ACO President Pierre Fillon opened the Hydrogen Village, a 27,000 square-foot area for zero-emission vehicles at Le Mans. In addition to the recently launched Bosch Engineering Ligier JS2 RH2 and Solution F Foeniz H2 GT, the Green GT LMPH2G Mission H24 car and Alpine Alpenglow are on display.

***Toyota, meanwhile, is set to unveil a hydrogen-powered vehicle during the ACO press conference on Friday that will also be on exhibit during the weekend. The Japanese manufacturer has been linked to a potential Hydrogen race program at Le Mans when the class launches in 2026.

***The ACO published a Wednesday attendance of 58,000 spectators. That compares to 25,000 on the same day last year. Upwards of 300,000 fans are expected to be in attendance for the weekend.

***The No. 72 TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage GTE contested the Rolex 24 at Daytona earlier this year with Team TGM, which received technical support from the British squad. TF Sport then converted the car from GT3 to GTE specification.

***Team principal Tom Ferrier told Sportscar365 that TF has sold its Le Mans class-winning Aston Martin from last year, leaving it with four GTE chassis under its ownership. The No. 33 hasn’t raced since being repaired by Aston Martin Racing after an airborne accident for Henrique Chaves at Monza 11 months ago.

***Chevrolet on Thursday launched the 2024 Camaro ZL1 Garage 56 Edition road car, which will be available later this year. It features unique aero, including dive-planes like the race car and a NASCAR Cup car-style wicker bill spoiler on the decklid along with a Garage 56 graphics package. Only 56 cars will be produced for the U.S. market.

Daniel Lloyd & Davey Euwema 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