Qatar Wednesday Notebook

***A bumper crop of 26 FIA World Endurance Championship rookies are set to contest this weekend’s season opener, the Qatar 1812km, of which eight are entered in Hypercar and 18 in the new-for-2024 LMGT3 class.

***Notable names among this year’s rookie contingent include Marco Wittmann, Raffaele Marciello, Mick Schumacher, Edoardo Mortara, Kelvin and Sheldon van der Linde, Daniel Juncadella and MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi.

***Of last year’s 16 rookies, only four have returned for 2024: Andrea Caldarelli, Daniil Kvyat, Ahmad Al Harthy and Ryan Hardwick.

***Peugeot recorded the highest top speed in the two-day Prologue test across Monday and Tuesday, with Jean Eric Vergne hitting 319.5 km/h (198.5 mph) in the No. 93 9X8. Second-quickest was the No. 11 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 6 Competizione on 307.7 km/h (191.2 mph), while the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R and the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 499P both clocked in at 306.8 km/h (190.6 mph).

***In the LMGT3 class, the two Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3s led the speed charts, with Esteban Masson hitting 268.7 km/h (167 mph) in the No. 87 car and Timur Boguslavskiy reaching 266.7 km/h (165.7 mph) in the sister No. 78 machine. Next up was the Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo at 259 km/h (160.9 mph).

***While admitting a high level of turnaround in the Porsche Penske Motorsport staff for this season, Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle said there’s “more smiling faces” inside the garage compared to the first year-and-a-half of the team’s WEC operation. Among the new additions is Jan Lange, who has become the team’s general manager.

***Kuratle said: “There’s no typical number but if you build up a team, 40-50 plus people and you employ them from scratch, everybody’s coming on board, that’s what we were doing one-and-a-half years ago, it does not always fit from both sides. People come to a team or a new employer, they do not find what they expected and it goes the other way around as well. We’ve had some changes in the team but I can really say it’s [for] the good.”

***Stellantis Motorsport director Jean-Marc Finot confirmed the updated Peugeot 9X8, which will debut at the next round of the season at Imola, is already “designed and frozen” and in the “pipe[line] for the homologation” in March.

***When asked by Sportscar365 on any possible prospects to run the 9X8 re-badged to another Stellantis-owned company in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Finot said: “It could be but so far we’re focused on the Peugeot program. We have to make it run in a competitive way.”

***Sportscar365 understands that Peugeot’s shift to the now-standard tire size for its updated 9X8 was one of the pre-requisites needed to enter a LMH car into the GTP class of the WeatherTech Championship.

***Hertz Team JOTA is running the No. 12 on its second Porsche 963 this year as a reference to Tom Brady’s number that he used in the NFL. The car numbers on both Hypercar entries are also utilizing the same font from the U.S. football league. Brady’s eponymous clothing brand has served as a team sponsor since the program’s launch last year.

***JOTA’s Jenson Button says he enjoyed his first experience of driving at Lusail in the Prologue. “There’s something about the asphalt that’s very tricky,” said the British driver. “It’s very edgy, and easy to lose the car on corner entry. It makes it difficult to push aggressively, but it also makes it fun, because you can drive the car in a manner that you can’t at most circuits. It kind of feels like driving a go-kart, when you see the steering inputs. It’s a challenging but fun circuit to drive.”

***Lamborghini Chief Technical Officer Rouven Mohr said the Italian manufacturer was “quite happy” with what they achieved in the Prologue, despite having set the 18th quickest time out of 19 Hypercars with the debuting Lamborghini SC63 run by Iron Lynx.

***Mohr told Sportscar365: “We did the performance evaluation that we wanted to do. We did our test program because nevertheless it’s our first race, so also have to learn and train the people on all of our sides to make the right things, the execution of the operation has to be fine-tuned. All those things, we were quite happy [and] we achieved what we wanted.”

***The Italian manufacturer could crate a track-day only prototype based on the Ligier-chassied SC63 in the future according to Mohr, who said they are “evaluating potentials in context” but stressed the current focus is on the WEC Hypercar/IMSA GTP programs.

***While most of international sports car racing on pause next week, Kamui Kobayashi will head to Japan after Qatar to contest the opening round of the Super Formula season at Suzuka Circuit, while Doriane Pin will make the shorter journey to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to begin her campaign in the all-female F1 Academy series.

***Callum Ilott, meanwhile, appears highly likely to land a berth at the Arrow McLaren team for next week’s opening round of the NTT IndyCar Series at St. Petersburg, with the team’s regular driver David Malukas set to miss the race with a broken wrist.

***A press conference was held on Wednesday morning at Khalifa International Stadium, located on the outskirts of Doha, involving Iron Dames drivers Pin, Michelle Gatting and Sarah Bovy, as well as founder Deborah Mayer and Iron Lynx boss Andrea Piccini.

***Rahel Frey, who was part of the Iron Dames lineup alongside Gatting and Bovy in 2023, was present in her capacity as the team’s project manager. She will however continue to race in the European Le Mans Series alongside her former WEC teammates this year in a Porsche 911 GT3 R.

***MotoGP star Alex Rins is understood to have visited Rossi at the Lusail International Circuit last weekend. The Yamaha rider shares a sponsor with the now-WRT BMW driver in the form of Monster Energy.

***It follows last week’s MotoGP pre-season test at Lusail, which will host the opening round of the two-wheeled championship on March 10. The WEC and MotoGP events are being billed collectively by the circuit as the ‘Lusail Speed Fest’.

***Part of the support package for this weekend’s WEC season opener is the Classic Endurance Racing series by Peter Auto, which will see vintage cars from decades past compete. Some of the cars, including a Porsche 906, Lola T70 and Lola T212, could be seen in the paddock on Wednesday.

John Dagys & Davey Euwema contributed to this report