Sao Paulo Friday Notebook

***The first day of on-track action for the FIA World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Sao Paulo event featured another landmark moment for Genesis Magma Racing in its debut season as it topped a session for the first time thanks to Mathieu Jaminet’s flying effort aboard the No. 19 Genesis GMR-001.

***Jaminet admitted the lap was a full qualifying sim and he was not sure how many of his rivals attempted a similar task without traffic. While the 1:24.271 he clocked was 1.2 seconds faster than Aston Martin Valkyrie driver Harry Tincknell’s pace from FP1, it was some way adrift of the pace from the equivalent session last year.

***Back in 2025, FP2 was headed by Kevin Estre from the Porsche Penske Motorsport squad that has since departed the championship with a time that was more than seven tenths quicker than Jaminet’s. And the fastest lap set in the Hypercar era around the Interlagos track is a 1:22.570 from Alex Lynn in a Cadillac V-Series.R last year.

***Things were much closer to last year among the LMGT3 ranks with the pacesetting 1:34.498 from the No. 87 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3 of Clemens Schmid being just five thousandths slower than Eduardo Barrichello’s benchmark in FP2 last season at the wheel of an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.

***Although the pair of Lexus entries topped FP2, Schmid’s stablemate Jose Maria Lopez cautioned that the Medium compound Goodyear tires mandated for the class in this year’s race will be “a bit more difficult for us” than the Hard tires on which the car was triumphant in Brazil last year.

***Despite the pair of Heart of Racing Valkyries ending FP2 in second and third, Tincknell cautioned the nature of the Interlagos track is not best suited to the car’s characteristics. He told Sportscar365: “It’s lots of low-speed corners, it’s quite undulating and quite cambered and the Valkyrie really excels in high speed. If we can score more points and aim towards the top five, that would be fantastic. Fuji and COTA will suit us more than here.”

***The No. 007 Valkyrie finished eighth in the 24 Hours of Le Mans last time out but was never a factor in the fight at the front, something Tincknell hopes can change at Interlagos. “Honestly it was one of those ones where you feel like you squeezed every bit of juice from the orange but there just wasn’t enough speed overall,” he said. “Hopefully we can be back in amongst it here.”

***Heart of Racing has reverted to two-driver lineups for Interlagos, with Tincknell just sharing with Tom Gamble. Also doing likewise is the No. 12 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac amid Alex Lynn’s continued absence following neck surgery. The team opted not to enter Louis Deletraz alongside Will Stevens and Norman Nato as it did at the previous two WEC rounds.

***JOTA co-founder Sam Hignett said no decisions have been taken about the lineup for the remainder of the season. “It’s still a long time before any of those decisions need to be made so we really are just taking it race by race at the moment,” he told Sportscar365, adding that he believes a two-driver lineup is a better option for Brazil.

***Stevens agreed that it brings some benefits, saying: “It’s easier to manage practice sessions – with three drivers it’s difficult with tires and to always get the right balance between everyone.”

***Hignett arrived in the Interlagos paddock on Friday morning having attended the Thursday of the Goodwood Festival of Speed where Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA is also having a presence as part of a celebration of American motorsport. Deletraz is due to be taking the V-Series.R up the famous hill.

***The compact, 2.677-mile Interlagos circuit contrasts with the far longer Circuit de la Sarthe that preceded it on the WEC schedule yet several drivers are relishing the challenge that it provides. Alpine racer Ferdinand Habsburg said: “It feels like a nice rollercoaster with the banking. Sometimes rollercoasters are really fun and sometimes they’re really scary – and today it felt a bit scary because I didn’t really know what was happening a lot of the time in the car. Sometimes you have to close your eyes and go for it. We were not particularly fast compared to our competitors, but I love coming here.”

***Another driver fond of the track is BMW M Hybrid V8 pilot Rene Rast with that dating back to his childhood. He told Sportscar365: “As a kid I always played on the PlayStation on this circuit. I watched Formula 1 a lot of times on the TV so it’s one of my favorite circuits. Obviously Senna plays a big part, but also the track layout – Turns 1, 2 and 3 this dipping down, you always saw in Formula 1 how they locked the front wheel and dive-bombed each other there. It’s a good compromise between high-speed and low-speed corners.”

***The MissionH24 project will have a scale model of its H24EVO prototype on display this weekend, with a press conference scheduled for Saturday featuring ACO President Pierre Fillon, WEC CEO Frederic Lequien, MissionH24 technical director Bassel Aslan, among others, for a discussion on the challenges of decarbonization through motorsport and the potential of hydrogen.

***It was confirmed last month that hydrogen technology will be incorporated into the 2030 top-class prototype regulations, with eligible cars set to compete via an Equivalence of Technology process, similar to that used back in the LMP1 days between petrol and diesel-powered engines.

***Saturday’s track action at Interlagos begins with a final hour-long free practice session at 10:10 a.m. local time (9:10 a.m. EST) before the teams’ attention then switches to qualifying, which is due to commence at 2:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. EST).

John Dagys contributed to this report