Friday - Entry and Free Practice sessions
For the second consecutive year, Autodromo di Imola Enzo e Dino Ferrari hosted the Italian round of the FIA WEC, replacing Monza and also serving as the first European race before the traditional duo, the Spa 6 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Compared to the last year of the European season, we completely lost Lamborghinis, both in the top class and in GT3. Among Grand Tourers, they were replaced with the newly coming Mercedes-AMG GT3. Prototypes are, however, one car down despite the two-car mandate for factory teams. Retiring Lamborghini and also Isotta Fraschini, which disappeared from the WEC scene last year soon after the European part of the season ended (competing then only at Sao Paulo), were more or less replaced with two newly coming Aston Martin Valkyries. But the biggest loss came from the Cadillac factory team reorganisation. Splitting with Chip Ganassi Racing and hiring existing Porsche privateer team JOTA led to a situation where we lost half of the privateer trophy entries. And with only two cars left, it is now not recognised as a separate championship, and the private Hypercar team race is only for the Driver's Championship, while the Chip Ganassi single entry disappeared without any replacement. Thus, one car is down this year.
Friday started with support races and traditionally two Free Practice sessions. While the Porsche Sixt Carrera Cup Deutschland is more or less a standard modern one-make series (with over 30 cars, though), the race called X-GT4 Suportsport GT is actually a mix of two local championships for Cup cars and GT4 cars, including, for example, Ligiers JS2, thus providing a nice variety of the field, which, however, cannot compete in terms of speed or entry numbers with the Carrera Cup.
The first WEC session was running on a drying track, and thus the time continuously progressed as the track dried up, leaving each manufacturer but the new Aston Martin in the provisional lead at some point of the session. In the end it was dominated by Ferraris, all three of them improving their time at the end of the session. The private entry with Kubica at the wheel was the last one to improve their time.
The second session was fully dry. And as it is common, most of the fastest times were set in the opening laps, which created order: Ferrari no.51, BMW no.15, Alpine no.36, BMW no,20, , Ferrari no.52, Cadillac no.38 and Ferrari no.83 and this was unchanged over the entire session. The best of the cars improving after their 10th lap was the Proton Porsche, basically just moving one of the Aston Martins from the 16th provisional spot.
An interesting point was that the two best times of the afternoon session were exactly the same. Ferrari was, however, listed as the overall winner of the session, we believe, because it set its time sooner. Generally, the times were off pace of the last year, which we believe was mainly subject to the weather.
The GT class was usually a battle between BMW and Lexus, splitting their success equally in both sessions and always keeping the top 3 spots in GT. Lexus achieved their best time in practice 2, and it became, like, among prototypes, the best GT time of the day.
For tomorrow the provisional weather forecast looks better; we could avoid any wet session, but for the race there is a danger that last year's shower, which decided the race, might be repeated again this year. Let's hope Ferrari, or generally race-leading teams, would be better prepared for such a situation.
Saturday – Final Free Practice
Today, with no sign of rain or wetness, the times improved and were finally quicker than last year. But unlike the previous two sessions, this time we had 2 red flags, and thus the driving time was rather limited. In the very early laps, the Cadillac no. 12 lost its grip while approaching Curve Rivazza and hit the barriers. Despite little damage compared to what it could have been, it never appeared again on track until qualifying. Not long later, Iron Dames Porsche spun at Variante Tamburello. While it was avoided by others and could recover itself, the red flag was shown soon after. It was because the yellow Ferrari 499P stopped, experiencing a short fire, apparently caused by oil leaking while having a gearbox or transmission issue. This was also fixed in time for qualifying.
Of the surviving cars, the two factory Ferraris were the only ones to get under 1:31 and were followed in timesheets by Peugeot, Cadillac, Toyota, another Peugeot and both Alpines. It seemed that Porsche is still struggling, following their pure inaugural season race at Qatar. None of them were in the top 10, while Aston Martins are still searching for speed.
In GT, it was Lexus first ahead of two Ferraris. In the overall results, the retired Cadillac was left without any time, while the private Ferrari, with only 4 laps completed, was outpaced even by the entire GT field.
Saturday - Qualifying GT3
The first, Hyperpole-defining session, saw both Mercedes-AMGs struggling in the last two positions. What would the team that split with Lamborghini and may have influenced their departure from the WEC say? Apart from them, we have got at least one car from each of the remaining 8 manufacturers to Hyperpole. Lexus and McLaren were the only ones to get in both cars. On the other side, solo BMW and Ferrari were faster than the third Lexus, followed by two McLarens.
During the Hyperpole, the Lexus no. 87 was at the top when Valentino Rossi took the provisional GT3 pole and was applauded by most fans in the grandstand. The same would soon repeat with Ferraris during the Hypercar sessions. Valentino stayed at the top, leading Lexus no. 87, Aston Martin, Ferrari and another Lexus. A Ford Mustang was 6th, while McLarens and a lone Porsche and Corvette failed to feature good enough times.
Saturday – Qualifying Hypercar
As already suggested, this was a Ferrari dominance. After three warm-up laps, almost every Ferrari running around the main grandstand improved and was applauded by a huge number of Italian fans. But at the same time, many qualifying times of the Ferraris were deleted. At the end of the session they were 1-2-3, while Peugeots suffered 11th and 12th despite showing some promising progress. In the end it was decided that all the competitive times of Fuoco in no. 50 Ferrari were achieved under broken track limits, and thus he was classified as the slowest car of all, including GT3, since his lap times 4, 5, 6 and 7 were all deleted. Thus, one of the Peugeots got in, which was a nice surprise. Apart from the remaining Ferraris, we had two cars from Toyota and Alpine in the Hyperpole, while Porsche, Cadillac and BMW had to rely only on one qualified entry.
Hyperpole again saw a dominance of the Ferrari. In particular, Giovinazzi broke the Hypercar Imola record, being the first-ever driver in this type of car running at Imola in under 1:29. The second Kubica was more than 0.7 seconds back, which is rather unusual in the modern Hypercar era. The third Vanthoor in the BMW no. 15, a new chassis here, was the only other driver managing to lap under 1:30. Both Toyotas were next; Alpine placed a decent 6th and 8th, while Peugeot surprised with 7th position. The performance of Cadillac and especially Porsche (the last one) continued to be disappointing.
Tomorrow at 1 PM the race will start. The weather forecast does not look the best, especially for the second part of the race. So can we see one again Ferrari dominant before the weather decides otherwise? All that can be mixed with safety cars, which usually bring the biggest suffering to the fastest teams, so there everything is far from clear, despite Ferrari so far showing notably better pace than any other manufacturer. If there were no cautions and no rain, without technical issues, they could easily repeat the 1-2-3 result from Qatar. But it is widely open, no worries.
Sunday – Race
After some time spent in a Goodyear Blimp, which was available to journalists to try in an opportunity to celebrate 100 years since it first flew the skies, everything started preparing for the main race. The pit walk for spectators was after the gridding of cars, followed by a standard grid walk, one of the last opportunities to get close to the cars and gather some chassis numbers 😉. The front row was filled with Ferraris, followed by BMW and Toyota in row 2, Toyota and Alpine in row 3, and finally Peugeot and another Alpine in row 4. Altogether there were 18 rows, equally split between GT and Hypercars, for a total of 36 starters, a common number this season outside Le Mans.
The start at 1 PM went smoothly without any collisions, and as expected, the two fastest Ferraris, factory no. 51 driven by Galado and private no. 83 started by Hanson, started making a gap from the rest of the field. For a long time, it was BMW no. 15, driven by Magnussen, that held the two Toyotas behind, later also gaining some margin. The 6th position was held by Di Resta in Peugeot no. 93, followed very closely by the two Alpines. Porsches and Cadillacs were less successful than all of the named makes. Only Aston Martin was still struggling to find a pace, and the two cars slowly lost contact with the rest of the Hypercar field.
In GT it looked like a good day for big and high cars, like BMW, Acura, or Mustang, which kept the top position, especially in the first part of the race. Later a Ferrari and finally also the Porsche were added to the mix. We will get to it later.
As usual, the huge Ferrari lead was spoilt by unnecessary safety car periods when first Aston Martin GT and later Ferrari GT no. 21 suffered accidents at Curve Rivazza. We are still convinced there are better ways to manage today's racing, especially with modern technology, which could neutralise the race either by slow zones or using a kind of code 60 or 80. Anything would be better than this farce when all previous performance is damaged. It seems that today it impacted more the GT race when the originally leading Valentino Rossi in BMW no. 46 lost his big lead twice, while at the finish, his crew was less than one second behind the winning Porsche no. 92, which was originally very well back in the field, but as the race progressed, especially during the SC periods, it highly improved, and with Rossi getting a penalty, Porsche could celebrate the victory.
In Hypercar it was all close, as the two Ferraris lead was artificially cut off to nearly zero, so after the dominance of Ferrari no. 51 in the first half of the race, which led 110 of the first 111 laps, allowed BMW no. 20 to cross the line first in lap 37 during the pit stops for refuelling. This BMW was not running high in the field, running about 10th position at this part of the race but was the only car to feature in the leaders list in the first half of the race. Later, when different strategies, often thanks to safety cars, and the cut lead of the Ferraris, the leading positions were changed more frequently, and the race appeared quite open. Only Cadillacs and Aston Martins were completely out of the game. Of the rest, we had periods when Porsche no. 6 was in the lead, later BMW no. 15, which was originally running 3rd as the best of the rest, private Ferrari no. 83 or Toyota no. 8 were also leading at times. Peugeots had a decent race, but just like even more successful Alpines, they never featured in the lead.
As the race progressed, the battle for the victory concentrated on the fast Ferrari no. 51 and the originally slower BMW no. 20, which led in laps 182-190 but, more importantly, ran longer ahead of Ferrari no. 51 in a similar refuelling strategy. At the same time, there was another battle for the lead between Toyota no. 8 and delayed Ferrari no. 50. They were on different strategies, and while the other cars pitted, these two appeared in the leading battle, despite having little chance of overall victory – unless there was forecasted rain or another caution. Fortunately, the rain never happened, and the second part of the race was incident-free. Except one: the two named, Toyota no. 8 driven by slow Buemi and the Ferrari no. 50 with Fuoco at the wheel, which was notably quicker, trying to overtake Buemi for nearly an hour. When he finally managed to get over him, Buemi braked too late, sending both cars to the gravel at Tamburello and causing the flat rear tyre of the Ferrari. It would be surprising if the Toyota was not penalised, though at the time of the race's end there was no clear decision made, though the incident was reported as under investigation. Buemi was 5th at the finish, while Fuoco finished a lap back as 15th. Not a good way of defending the championship title if Toyota wants to win it again.
At the front it became clearer that Ferrari no. 51 needed a much shorter pit stop and got safely into the lead. But it was a question whether the Ferrari no. 83, which had to pit with less than 10 minutes to go, would keep BMW no. 20 and surprisingly well-running Alpine no. 36 behind. But before the Ferrari left the pit lane, both BMW and Alpine were already ahead. Thus, we had another win for Ferrari, but this time nicely supported by BMW and Alpine on the podium, both showing promising pace and improvement this year, and they might be very tough for Toyota and Porsche, the two leading manufacturers from last year, to beat.
The second and originally quicker BMW no. 15 was overtaken by Buemi in the final stages of the race and is provisionally classified 6th, ahead of another Toyota. Peugeot had a decent race, but 9th position of the better car behind the best Porsche is probably not the result they hoped for. Cadillacs were a general disappointment, one of them even being lapped despite safety cars, but in the end, the 10th place is probably more than they could hope for.
Generally an interesting race, undecided until the end but with fewer safety cars and also fewer track limits, notably in qualifying, it would make the championship even better. With the recent announcement of McLaren joining the top class since 2027, along with Ford's earlier announcement and the already known Hyundai brand Genesis from the next season, we can only hope that all current manufacturers will stay at least for several coming seasons and the series will be even more interesting.
