Monza Saturday Notebook

***The 0.017-second difference between Toyota’s Kamui Kobayashi and Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco in qualifying for the 6 Hours of Monza was the closest margin between first and second on the Hypercar grid since the FIA World Endurance Championship introduced single-driver qualifying in 2021.

***It beat the previous-closest margin, between Toyota teammates Kobayashi and Brendon Hartley at Fuji last season, by three-thousandths of a second.

***Kobayashi’s pole time of 1:35.358 was the fastest Hypercar qualifying lap to date at Monza, eclipsing the 1:35.416 from Glickenhaus driver Romain Dumas last year. “When we started to attack, some cars came out so the traffic was not brilliant,” said Kobayashi. “But my lap was clear, and I tried to do my best to judge [it]. “I think we knew that the [gap] to the other competitor was so close, so we [couldn’t] do conservative laps.”

***The extra point for pole has provisionally elevated the No. 7 Toyota crew to fourth in the FIA Hypercar World Endurance Drivers’ Championship. Kobayashi, Jose Maria Lopez and Mike Conway are level with the No. 50 Ferrari on 67 points but have won two races.

***It comes after Lopez said earlier in the event that the No. 7 lineup needs to quickly turn the page after its retirement from the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “[We will] try to help and support car No. 8 as well,” he said. “Of course, we need to fight back. There are many points in play in these next three races.”

***Peugeot was upbeat about its qualifying performance, with Jean-Eric Vergne and Gustavo Menezes putting the pair of Peugeot 9X8s fourth and seventh on the grid.

***Head of Stellantis Motorsport Jean-Marc Finot said: “We would have preferred of course to fight for the pole, but we can see that with the engagement and the work that has been done by the team since the beginning of the season, we are improving race after race. We were 2.4 seconds off the pole at Spa, now only three-tenths. It’s a huge step, even if not enough for us.”

***Robert Kubica claimed his first career WEC pole in LMP2 but said that an issue early in the session “added a bit of stress” and cost track time compared to the other drivers.

***WRT sporting director Thierry Tassin explained the issue in more detail: “When he went out on his new tires, one of the rear wheels was out of balance and he had a vibration. He cleverly decided to pit and went out on another set, so he was out of sequence.”

***Tassin also told Sportscar365 that an ignition coil was changed on the No. 31 Oreca to help address an engine problem during Free Practice 3. “The engine wasn’t pulling,” he said. “They could feel it straight away as soon as they got out of the pit.”

***The Isotta Fraschini Tipo 6 LMH Competizione completed a 10-minute demonstration run before qualifying with ex-Formula 1 Andrea Montermini at the wheel. It lapped alongside the track day-focused Tipo 6 LMH Pista, driven by Jean-Karl Vernay.

***The No. 709 Glickenhaus 007 Pipo, which finished seventh at Le Mans, is another Hypercar set to appear at the Goodwood Festival of Speed next week. Ryan Briscoe and customer driver Jason McCarthy will drive up the hill.

***Jim Glickenhaus also confirmed that it was a planned move for Nathanael Berthon to replace Briscoe aboard the No. 708 car after he joined the team at Le Mans, adding that Romain Dumas recommended signing Berthon. The two raced together at Rebellion Racing at Le Mans in 2020. “Romain was very complimentary about him,” said Glickenhaus.

***The next possible platform-based Balance of Performance change for the Hypercar class can be made after two representative races. In other words, it will next be possible ahead of the 8 Hours of Bahrain season finale unless there is rain at Monza or Fuji. A platform BoP change is when LMH and LMDh are adjusted as groups, instead of changes to individual cars.

***General Motors sports car racing program manager Laura Wontrop Klauser was “super proud” of Cadillac’s podium result in its first Le Mans since 2002. “The past couple of weeks have been [about] reflection and the smile just gets bigger and bigger,” she said.

***Ben Keating said that he put in a good word for TF Sport during casual discussions with his current team Corvette Racing but stated that it had “nothing to do with” the Aston Martin team forging a deal to run Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs next year.

***Keating told Sportscar365: “I believe that TF and I were both having secret meetings with Corvette that we didn’t want the other one to know about!” The American Bronze-rated driver reiterated that he doesn’t expect to race in LMGT3 next year, despite the new connection between his teams from the last two GTE-Am seasons.

***Inter Europol Competition has retired its No. 34 Oreca 07 Gibson that finished first in LMP2 at Le Mans, with the car having only done that race. It will be stored as a museum piece in the Polish team’s headquarters, unwashed. The chassis at Monza will do next weekend’s European Le Mans Series round at Paul Ricard, while a different one will be freighted to Fuji and Bahrain. The team has another new chassis on order.

***The red flag in GTE-Am qualifying, triggered by a spin for Efrin Castro, impacted qualifying for the Satoshi Hoshino-driven No. 777 D’Station Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR. Tomonobu Fujii felt that Hoshino was in “quite a good position” before the red flag, but that he was unable to improve after taking the most out of the tires in his initial run. Hoshino ended the session 11th in class.

***Sarah Bovy claimed the fourth GTE-Am pole for Iron Dames and the 23rd for Porsche in the category, which matched the German manufacturer’s pole position total in GTE-Pro.

***Gianmaria Bruni’s biggest challenge in his first year of prototype racing has been returning to left-foot braking. The Proton Competition driver used left-foot braking in Formula 1 but switched to right-foot braking when he entered GTs in 2007 and the cars had sequential gear shifting.

***Bruni explained: “Then everybody switched to left when the paddle shifting came, but I kept on right. When this [Hypercar drive] came up, I said that I needed to do some LMP2 to go back to the left foot.”

***Proton spent Friday and Saturday getting to grips with its new Porsche 963. It treated FP1 as a rollout, before trying low-fuel runs on new tires with Tincknell in the other sessions. Bruni’s attempt at a long run in FP2 was impacted by a fuel pump issue six laps into the stint.

***Risi Competizione team owner Giuseppe Risi was spotted in the Monza paddock on Saturday. Risi’s team runs a Ferrari 296 GT3 in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup.

***A minute’s silence was held across the paddock at 12:45 p.m., shortly before the F1 Academy support race, in tribute to Dilano van ‘t Hoff who died in a crash during a Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine race at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend.

Davey Euwema contributed to this report