Spa Post-Race Notebook

***Toyota extended its winning streak at the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps to seven editions as Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi notched up their third victory together at the Belgian circuit.

***Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa maintained their lead in the FIA Hypercar Drivers World Endurance Championship standings despite finishing second. The drivers of the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid will head to the 24 Hours of Le Mans on 72 points, which is five more than Kobayashi, Lopez and Conway.

***Toyota increased its lead over Ferrari in the manufacturers’ table to 33 points. Porsche, Cadillac and Peugeot remain in third, fourth and fifth.

***Cadillac would not divulge the issue that caused Renger van der Zande’s huge accident at Eau Rouge when he was running second. “Renger was doing a great job and [engineer] Danielle [Shepherd] made a great selection on tires,” said director of operations and strategist Mike O’Gara. “We were just putting in laps, cruising and then unfortunately had a bit of an issue at the most critical, highest-loaded part of the track that ended our day.”

***The team suspected during the race that the accident was caused by a problem with the car’s power steering. Van der Zande said that it felt like something “almost out of a movie scene” as his No. 3 Cadillac V-Series.R impacted the tire barriers at high speed.

***The No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 dropped behind the No. 708 Glickenhaus 007 Pipo for 13th overall and seventh in Hypercar due to a five-second post-race time penalty for leaving the pits while a mechanic was still in the working area. Click here for the final results.

***Peugeot was upbeat about its reliability as both cars completed the race without mechanical trouble, despite finishing 14th and 17th. “It is growing step-by-step,” said technical director Olivier Jansonnie when asked about the team’s confidence. “For sure, on that respect, we are a bit more confident now than we were in Portimao, but again Le Mans will be for sure a difficult one.”

***Jansonnie explained that the No. 94 Peugeot’s time-consuming stoppage at the end of the pit lane was not a car issue. “[It] is related to the fuel rig,” he said. “That’s why it stopped. It created a failure on the system, and we are not sure that we could actually restart, being legal on the energy. That’s why we stopped in the pit lane.” After the delay, Peugeot used the rest of the No. 94 car’s race to test some items including the three different tire compounds.

***The No. 93 Peugeot, meanwhile, lost pace towards the end after Jean-Eric Vergne was hit from behind by an LMP2 car. “After that, I was just taking it very easy in the high-speed corners because the car was not feeling great,” Vergne told Sportscar365. “I’m glad I brought the car back in one piece because it really was not easy out there.”

***The No. 51 Ferrari 499P encountered “two emergencies” as it made two extra pit stops en route to its first podium of the season, according to Ferrari’s GT and sports cars race and testing manager Giuliano Salvi. The first was for a slow puncture, while the second was an emergency fuel stop under the final safety car that forced Alessandro Pier Guidi to pit again when racing resumed.

***Salvi added that Ferrari AF Corse set up its cars to work best in the dry. “Our car was more [focused] on the last part of the race conditions,” he said. “Quite grippy conditions. At that time, I think our deg was really low.”

***Both Ferrari and Peugeot played it safe by starting both of their LMH cars on wet tires, but this backfired when the track dried up. “We went for the safest option,” said Jansonnie. “In the end, it appeared to be the wrong option.”

***Toyota would have swapped Kobayashi back ahead of Hartley if the Japanese driver was ordered to give back the position he gained off the track at Raidillon during the final hour. “After then we would have swapped the two cars because car No. 8 was slower,” said Toyota’s technical director Pascal Vasselon. “From a sporting side, it didn’t change anything.”

***Vasselon was unsure if the No. 51 Ferrari would have beaten or split the Toyotas if it hadn’t made two extra stops. “It could have been tighter at the end,” he said. “I think we were still able to keep a gap. But it’s very difficult to review completely.”

***Kobayashi’s time of 2:02.327 on lap 128 was the fastest of the race. Alpine driver Charles Milesi set the LMP2 pace, while Richard Mille AF Corse’s Alessio Rovera did the same in GTE-Am.

***Porsche Penske Motorsport “sacrificed” some sessions including qualifying to work through some of the early-season issues experienced by its Porsche 963s related to steering and braking. Factory LMDh director Urs Kuratle added that two more tests in Europe — a visit to Monza and an endurance run at Paul Ricard — are in the pipeline between Spa and Le Mans.

***Hertz Team JOTA will test its Porsche 963 before Le Mans after finishing sixth on its race debut just one week after receiving the customer LMDh car. It is understood that a session at Paul Ricard is on the cards and is set to incorporate night running.

***Luis Perez Companc returned to the top step of the GTE-Am podium for the first time since 2014, when he won at Spa alongside Marco Cioci and Mirko Venturi.

***Companc, Rovera and Lilou Wadoux delivered Ferrari’s first GTE-Am victory since the 2021 season finale in Bahrain, ending an eight-race winless streak for the manufacturer.

***Zach Robichon described how tire management affected the race of the Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19, which finished fourth in GTE-Am after leading at points. “Because we were able to get our Porsche’s tires up to temperature faster than some of our rivals, I even managed to take the lead in the GTE-Am class,” he said. “But on the flip side, we struggled with deteriorating tires at the end of our stints and lost time again as a result.”

***D’station Racing dropped from 28th to 29th in the final classification after Silver-rated driver Casper Stevenson undercut his 1 hour-45 minute minimum drive time and had the remainder added to the No. 777 Aston Martin Vantage GTE’s total.

***Fabio Scherer felt that Inter Europol Competition “should have won” LMP2 but for a right-rear puncture due to contact that caused the No. 34 Oreca 07 Gibson to undergo an emergency pit stop. “We recovered almost two minutes but we had after the last safety car a puncture, so we had to go twice to pit,” Scherer told Sportscar365.

***Inter Europol claimed its first podium of the season, maintaining a strong start racing against several teams that will graduate to Hypercar next year. “I see even more potential for the next races,” said Scherer. “We never tested so far, so we have just done the races.”

***Vector Sport was unsure about the issue that caused the left-rear wheel to detach from the No. 10 Oreca. “We don’t yet know what caused the issue as nothing showed up on the data and Gabi [Aubry] didn’t report any vibration issues so we will have to wait until we get the car back to launch a full investigation,” said team principal Gary Holland.

***Phil Hanson acknowledged he made a mistake on one of the formation laps when he lost control of his United Autosports Oreca and hit the wall at Raidillon. “It was one of those moments that can catch a driver out but there’s no excuse for it,” he said. Hanson and Frederick Lubin remain the LMP2 championship leaders after bouncing back to finish fifth alongside Filipe Albuquerque.

***General Motors sports car racing program manager Laura Wontrop Klauser was at Spa and hinted at possible considerations to sell the Cadillac LMDh to customers. “There’s been a lot of constraint on parts as we started this program, so I’m glad that we didn’t commit to anything beyond what we have,” she said. “But that’s starting to finally become a little bit more comfortable, and the supply chain is catching up. So I think that’s opening the door for us to have future discussions, but we don’t have a plan right now.”

***The WEC published a three-day weekend attendance figure of 72,224. A four-day attendance of 73,000 was posted for last year’s CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa run by SRO Motorsports Group.

***With the first three rounds of the season in the books, attention now turns to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. WEC teams will return to official track action during the test day on June 4.