WEC | Ferrari, partial disappointment: “Hyperpole out of reach”

Even with the knowledge that the Hyperpole was probably out of reach, there were some long faces at Ferrari-AF Corse at the end of the Qualifying that defined the starting grid of the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.

In this fifth seasonal event of the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship, the official 499Ps did not go beyond sixth and ninth place in the second heat which assigned the starting position from the pole, in a ranking that was close at the level of thousandths that could have made the difference.

Antonio Fuoco managed to put his Rossa #50 in the third row with a time of 1’23″532, improving by 5 hundredths on his best time set in the previous session and stopping at +0″392 from the record of the Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi.

“Qualifying and Hyperpole were quite complicated and we saw very close times between the various opponents. We did our best to get the best placement”, admitted at the end of the session the Calabrian, winner at Le Mans together with colleagues Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen.

“Looking ahead to the race, it will undoubtedly be a 6 Hours with several variables to consider, from traffic on the track to the weather. As always, we will start with the aim of doing our best, hoping to compete for the top positions.”

Temperatures are expected to be a little higher than the 15°C seen on Saturday for the race, but above all the nature of the Brazilian track with its rough surface at times will create an extra headache for tyre strategy.

Michelin brought the medium and hard compounds, and in two days of testing it was noted that degradation is quite high over the stints, especially on the right-hand side given that the track is one of the few to have an anti-clockwise layout.

This will certainly reshuffle the cards from a strategic point of view, so not all is lost (we are still talking about a 6-hour race), even for those forced to start further back, like Alessandro Pier Guidi, ninth on the grid with the 499P #51.

“Today we cannot be satisfied with the result. During the Hyperpole I was unable to complete the first flying lap at my best because a car slowed me down”, reveals the Piedmontese, who when he set off to attack the lead found a rival in front of him who cut the ‘S do Senna’, without however leaving the way for the Ferrari driver despite having to abort the lap, in a rather unfair manner.

“I thought the second attempt could have gone better, but it didn’t. It’s a shame, in different conditions I could have maybe repeated the time I did in qualifying, thus gaining a couple of positions, but in any case I wouldn’t have been able to fight for pole position.”

#83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, Yifei Ye

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The biggest disappointment came from the 499P #83 of AF Corse, eliminated in the first phase of qualifying and relegated to 15th place, with Robert Shwartzman almost 0.4″ away from the tenth place that would have allowed him to access the Hyperpole.

“Today was not a good day for us, we tried a different strategy that in the end didn’t pay off. It’s a shame because the track is very fun to drive and different from the others”, regrets the teammate of Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye.

“Sector 2 is quite challenging because the car moves a lot in all the ups and downs. On Sunday the weather can be a wild variable, which would certainly be useful for us.”