Spa Friday Notebook

***Kamui Kobayashi took his second Spa-Francorchamps individual pole in the Toyota GR010 Hybrid, after doing so in 2021. The Japanese driver said he was “a bit surprised” to top qualifying after Antonio Giovinazzi’s lap time deletion for exceeding track limits.

***Porsche Penske Motorsport described its performance in qualifying as “a strange thing” after qualifying sixth and tenth. “Are we happy? No, we are not where we wanted to be,” factory LMDh director Urs Kuratle told Sportscar365. “We have to understand the tire choices from the competitors. Once we know who was on softs and who was on medium tires, then we know more about the whole thing.”

***Kuratle went on to praise the performance of customer team Hertz Team JOTA, which qualified six-tenths behind the best factory car with Will Stevens driving. “A good job from the JOTA guys because they really had a jump start with our customer car and they really did a good job on this one,” said Kuratle. “So congratulations to them.”

***Hertz Team JOTA team principal Dieter Gass described Stevens’ qualifying result as “very respectable” considering the No. 38 car only ran for the first time eight days ago.

***The hybrid system issue that struck Andre Lotterer’s Porsche in Free Practice 2 will need further analysis, according to Kuratle. “We are in contact with Bosch and Williams, the hybrid partners, to find out what really happened,” he said. “It’s something we never had before, and it’s also probably not related to Bosch or Williams or their components. It’s really either car or track related.”

***In addition to Porsche’s WEC drivers, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship ace Felipe Nasr was also present at the reveal of a special 24 Hours of Le Mans livery on Friday. “I was in Europe already, so I just thought to stop by and see how the guys are doing,” Nasr said. “I think [the livery] is very unique and I think the idea of it all was to go back to the very traditional cars that Porsche had raced in Le Mans. A very unique occasion for a very unique celebration of 75 years of Porsche and 100 years of Le Mans.”

***The replacement chassis for the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo arrived in the paddock at around 3:30 p.m. It missed qualifying as it was being prepared, although Diego Alessi, Ulysse de Pauw and Simon Mann are set to take part in Saturday’s race.

***Team manager Ron Reichert praised the AF Corse mechanics who have toiled to get the No. 21 and the No. 54 Ferraris race-ready after their Free Practice 2 collision. He told Sportscar365 that the No. 21 crew helped their No. 54 counterparts to repair the latter car on Thursday night, while the No. 54 group will return the favor this evening.

***Corvette Racing is feeling the effects of the 45 kg of success ballast that its No. 33 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R is carrying. Ben Keating qualified the car fourth in GTE-Am. “We are struggling with that, but they’ve put it in place for a reason,” Nicky Catsburg said.

***Catsburg outlined where the ballast hurts the most: “It’s all acceleration zones. I feel like sector two is probably going to be our best sector, but coming out of the last corner, out of Turn 1, up the hill… We cannot accelerate. We are too heavy. It’s hurting us there. But with the pit stops that we do and the strategies that we have, I think we will still end up having a good result.”

***45 kg is the maximum amount of ballast that a GTE-Am car may carry. Ballast of 15, 10 and 5 kg is given to the top three finishers from the previous race, the top three from the race before that and the top three in the championship standings.

***Tom Blomqvist was “winging it a little bit” during his LMP2 pole run, as he went without a qualifying simulation in Free Practice. “Luckily I had a test here a few months ago where the car was working really well then,” the United Autosports driver said. “I kind of had to trust that from the first corner. Once I did the first corner, I could get a feeling that the car was working really well and then you just build on that throughout the lap.”

***Team Project 1 saw a qualifying accident at Raidillon cause its withdrawal from the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps for the second time in two years. PJ Hyett’s accident took place at the same spot where Egidio Perfetti crashed out of qualifying in 2021.

***Proton Competition is “on the limit” with chassis allocation for Le Mans after the team lost one of its Porsche 911 RSR-19s during last week’s European Le Mans Series race at Barcelona. Team boss Christian Ried was involved in a multi-car incident on the opening lap, which heavily damaged the No. 77 car. “[That] chassis is gone,” Ried told Sportscar365. “It’s big damage and we struggle a lot with getting chassis from Porsche. We lost one in Sebring from Hardwick, now this one.”

***Ried added that Proton can still currently provide all six of its Le Mans entries with cars — four of its own and two for Iron Lynx — but could encounter trouble if one suffers heavy damage in the meantime.

***Alessandro Pier Guidi told Sportscar365 that he “can’t wait to have a clean race” with the No. 51 Ferrari 499P which encountered setbacks at Sebring, where it had an accident, and Portimao where it experienced brake-by-wire issues.

***When asked how important it is to have a trouble-free run at Spa — the last WEC round before Le Mans — Pier Guidi said: “It’s true, but we all know that Le Mans counts the championship. We look forward to being as competitive as we can [there]. To be honest, I would lose every race if I could win Le Mans.”

***Chip Ganassi Racing’s WEC squad explored wet conditions for the first time in FP3. “To be honest we were testing the limits of where the crossover window was,” Earl Bamber told Sportscar365. “Every time we tried it, we were in the wrong moment. And then we ended up basically in the dry with wets.”

***Jean-Eric Vergne reckoned that his No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 could have posted a quicker time in qualifying, but not enough to make significant inroads. “We didn’t expect to be much better,” he told Sportscar365. “To be fair, I probably had a fair amount of time in my lap, but no more than five-tenths. I got a yellow flag and traffic to the Porsche on my best lap for tire performance. The lap after was clean but the tire performance was gone.”

***Stoffel Vandoorne is with Peugeot this weekend, as part of his reserve driver role that was announced in February.

***Another prominent Belgian driver, Maxime Martin, is also here. The BMW factory ace contested two WEC seasons with Aston Martin, winning the GTE-Pro class Spa in 2019.

***Additionally, BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos is in the paddock. BMW M Team WRT is due to start testing the manufacturer’s LMDh car next month.

***Two-time 8 Hours of Bahrain GTE-Am winner Larry ten Voorde is at Spa competing in the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany support races. He finished second in the opening race to Harry King.

***Ferrari is “already studying” potential future joker upgrades for the Ferrari 499P according to its performance, simulations and technical regulations manager Mauro Barbieri. However, the Italian manufacturer is unlikely to assess whether changes are needed until later in the season, with Barbieri saying: “Before deciding something we need to wait a few more races to make sure we are making the car work in a proper way.”

***Audi has launched a new 320-page book about its time at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Audi at Le Mans by Lars Krone and Alexander von Wegner contains “previously unpublished images” and “extensive insights” into the manufacturer’s 13 wins at the French endurance classic.

***MotorTrend is showing the first and last 90 minutes of the race live on TV in the U.S., with the full race available on its online platform. The WEC official app is also showing the complete broadcast as usual. Click here for full TV and online coverage details.

***The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps starts at 12:45 p.m. local time (6:45 a.m. ET).

Davey Euwema contributed to this report