Sao Paulo Saturday Notebook

***The short Interlagos lap may lend itself to close FIA World Endurance Championship qualifying sessions, but Saturday’s Hypercar Hyperpole shootout was exceptionally tight with just six-tenths of a second separating the ten cars involved.

***It was Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA that achieved a fourth 1-2 qualifying result with Will Stevens securing a fifth WEC pole for the brand, making the American manufacturer the third to achieve such a milestone in the Hypercar era and the fifth to have done so in the top class throughout the series’ history.

***However, this is the first time anyone other than Alex Lynn has taken a Cadillac pole. Stevens’ 1:23.041 ensured it was his first series pole since setting the LMP2 benchmark at Fuji back in 2016 with the G-Drive Racing squad, but his lap a decade on was almost half a second slower than Lynn’s time from Sao Paulo last year.

***The manufacturer to get closest to Cadillac in Hyperpole was Alpine with Victor Martins just 0.067 seconds adrift of Stevens at the wheel of the No. 36 A424. Despite the positive result, Martins told Sportscar365: “I’m a bit frustrated because less than one tenth you can find it everywhere as a race driver.”

***Genesis Magma Racing had seemingly matched its best starting position of sixth as its impressive Sao Paulo weekend continued. However, Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 19 Genesis GMR-001 was subsequently demoted one place for impeding the No. 20 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Sheldon van der Linde in the first part of qualifying.

***Also sanctioned for the same offense post-session was the No. 7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid of Kamui Kobayashi. He was given a three-place grid drop for blocking Jaminet but, with the Toyota only being 16th quickest of the 17 Hypercars, that crew has effectively received the same penalty as Jaminet.

***It was already a tricky weekend for Toyota with it being the only manufacturer not to get at least one car through to Hyperpole. Ryo Hirakawa, who will start 14th in the No. 8 machine, said it had always been a tricky circuit for the Japanese brand. He told Sportscar365: “I think in qualifying we just struggled to extract the performance and hopefully the race pace should be OK.”

***Interlagos had also been a bogey track for Ferrari, but Antonio Fuoco was happy to have qualified the best of the trio of 499Ps seventh fastest (and now promoted to sixth on the grid with Jaminet’s penalty). He told Sportscar365: “I think today, with what we have, we couldn’t do more than this. We need to be happy as a team because we know that coming here is always quite tricky for us, but I think we did a really good step forward from last year.”

***Another driver happy with their performance was Malthe Jakobsen who achieved Peugeot’s target of getting a car into Hyperpole to bounce back from its horrible 24 Hours of Le Mans last month. Jakobsen will start eighth but reckoned he could have improved by a couple more places with a perfect lap.

***Throughout the Brazilian event there has been talk of rain or even thunderstorms during Sunday’s race. However, some forecasters now suggest there is a chance conditions could remain dry after all. Jakobsen is among those hoping that it does indeed rain. He told Sportscar365: “I have good memories from [a wet] Austin last year, my first podium with the team. I’m Scandinavian, Paul is Scottish so we’re some of the nationalities more used to rain!”

***Kobe Pauwels achieved pole in the LMGT3 division on just his second WEC outing in a Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo. It marked Aston’s record 72nd pole in the series and its sixth in the LMGT3 era.

***Pauwels also has the honor of completing the quickest-ever LMGT3 lap around Interlagos, with his 1:33.350 eclipsing the previous best of 1:33.849 set by Eduardo Barrichello, who Pauwels was coincidentally deputizing for this weekend.

***The Belgian admitted he “never expected” to take pole on his first visit to Interlagos and added: “The team has done such a good job and gave me a really quick car. They helped me so much throughout the weekend with data, video and those kind of things, which I think was crucial in the end.”

***The championship-leading No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R failed to make Hyperpole but Ben Keating was “thrilled” with the 12th place he achieved when carrying the maximum 36 kilos of weight success penalties. He told Sportscar365: “I thought we would be nowhere, I even talked to the team about maybe saving the tires to have better tires than everyone else. That lap was one second faster than the quali sim I did this morning – it was way better than I expected.”

***Neither of the Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evos progressed to Hyperpole either on the team’s first visit to Interlagos. When learning the track’s nuances was so key, Antares Au admitted the No. 10 crew were further hampered by a driveshaft problem during Friday practice that cost a significant amount of power, with series officials granting the squad dispensation to change the faulty part.

***The 6 Hours of Sao Paulo is due to begin at 11:30 a.m. local time on Sunday (10:30 a.m. EST). Full coverage is available on the FIA WEC+ service with Brazilian ace Felipe Nasr joining Martin Haven and Graham Goodwin in the commentary booth. Radio Show Ltd will also be providing commentary on the race on RS1 with Jonny Palmer and Johnny Mowlem in the booth.