Thursday – Entry and Free Practice sessions
After only three weeks, we are back for another FIA WEC race. This time at Spa-Francorchamps, the third round of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship, is the last competition test before the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours. The entry list is more or less the same. There are some minor changes among drivers' lines, mainly due to a clash with the IMSA race at Laguna Seca. Among the cars, the most notable difference compared to the Imola race is the Mercedes-AMG no. 60, which switched from a yellow livery to a mainly grey one, now looking way more similar to its sister no. 61. Unfortunately, this Mercedes no. 60 would later crash in the final stages of prolonged practice 2.
Despite some afternoon showers forecast, the track stayed dry for the entire day, and the conditions were nearly ideal. A new track surface also helped to improve the times. In the first free practice session, the Hypercars did not yet beat their first-day Spa times, but it was clear that this year Hypercars would show one of the fastest performances so far at Spa since their inception in 2021.
The first session was dominated by two Ferraris. Factory car no. 50 was the only one under 2:03, just ahead of private yellow no. 83, with an Alpine, with both Peugeots following. The last of the Ferraris was only 8th, behind the better of the BMWs and the better of the Cadillacs.
This slowest Ferrari (no. 51) would soon cause the first red flag in session 2. During his out lap, Giovinazzi spun off to the barriers in Raidillon after leaving Eau Rouge. Fortunately, the damage was not too heavy, and the car appeared after nearly two hours to make two unmeasured laps (out and in lap) just before the session was flagged.
The second red flag was caused by the already mentioned Mercedes no. 60. It suffered a front end damage, also at the Eau Rouge/Raidillon esses. According to the latest news from the team, the aim is to have the car repaired for the qualifying.
For that reason the session was prolonged by 30 minutes. The times were already better than in the morning/noon session, and the fastest Porsche, no. 6, set the fastest-ever first-day lap time for Hypercar: 2:01.475. There are voices that we can see a Hypercar setting time under 2 minutes at Spa for the first time in qualifying tomorrow. We will see. Almost the same times were achieved the first day in 2023, but the qualifying did not see such improvement, unlike on other days, when hypercars run only 2:03 or even 2:05 on day 1.
Ferrari no. 50 was only 2nd this time, despite also improvement in 2:02. In the end, 5 cars ended the session with a time in the 2:01s, while nine cars were within a single second. Behind the Porsche and Ferrari, there was a BMW, followed by Cadillac, the second factory Porsche, the private Ferrari, Toyota, another BMW and the best of the Alpines. Peugeots could not improve enough to repeat their very good results from the first session.
While the times were more or less settled for the second half of the session, a third red flag caused another termination of an already prolonged session. Aston Martin Valkyrie left the track and suffered major damage to its rear part. Until now we have no information on whether it can be rebuilt for the race. However, the damage looked rather serious.
The GT cars could not get under 2:18 in both sessions – but even that was an improvement from 2:20 last year when the GT3 version debuted. To compare them with previous GTEs, they managed to run in 2:15s on the first day in 2023. In the first session it was Lexus, Ferrari and Lexus in the top 3, while the second session ended with Aston Martin, Lexus and Ferrari at the top.
Tomorrow the weather should be similarly good, and we will await whether Hypercar can finally run Spa under 2 minutes. And also how the damaged cars return to the race meeting, if at all (in the case of Aston). See you tomorrow.
Friday – Last Free Practice
Even better weather conditions and better times welcomed numerous spectators on Friday. The times very quickly went under 2:01 and close to the 2-minute limit as never before for Hypercars in free practice. So far, the best free practice times for Hypercar have been set in 2021 (2:02s) and 2022 (2:03s).
A piece of good news was to see both Aston Martin Valkyries back, with the damaged car repaired. On the other hand, the Mercedes is still not repaired. Another piece of good news was that there were no incidents, full course yellows or red flags this morning.
The dark side of the session was numerous times to be deleted, most often for track limits. While during the early stages of the session there were as many as 5 cars in the 2:00s, later when all penalties were applied, only three such cars remained. Thus, the results did not have valuable informative value about the real performances of the cars. And once again, we would suggest altering the rules so that the under-table results notes do not look like this time:
CARS 009 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 10 - 15 - 20 - 21 - 27 - 31 - 33 - 35 - 38 - 46 - 50 - 51 - 54 - 59 - 61 - 77 - 78 - 81 - 83 - 85 - 87 - 88 - 92 - 94 - 95 AND 99 SOME LAPTIME DELETED DUE TO TRACK LIMITS
CAR 15 - DRIVER MARCIELLO - SOME LAPTIMES DELETED DUE TO STEWARDS DECISION NR. 18
CAR 20 - DRIVER FRIJNS - SOME LAPTIMES DELETED DUE TO STEWARDS DECISION NR. 19
We are afraid the official decisions of this kind will have a higher impact on the coming qualifying and Hyperpole results than the actual performance.
What we can say about the times achieved in P3 is that Ferrari no. 50 was fastest once again, followed surprisingly by two Cadillacs and the private Ferrari. Ferrari no. 51 was slower once again (9th); BMWs, while running very strongly early in the session, ended the last after being hit most by that time deleting procedures. That all helped some cars to feature higher; as usual, most to Aston Martins (11th and 15th). Factory Porsches were obviously working more on race strategy preparation than on setting a good time (14th and 16th), while the private Proton entry went through their best session thus far (8th with 2:02.1).
The GT part was led by Ferrari, followed by Ford Mustang and Lexus. Now we can only hope that most drivers will manage to keep those so-called 'track limits', avoiding converting the coming qualifying session into a farce – something like Imola saw the first race winner in Qatar (Ferrari no. 50) officially setting a slower qualifying time than the entire GT field. This is really ridiculous, considering the fact Fuoco was on track the entire Q session and circulated without any obvious problems.
Now exactly 30 minutes before the start of the qualifying session. Let's just hope we will see sports car running along the Spa track in under 2 minutes for the first time since the demise of the LMP1 hybrids.
Hypercars finally under 2-minutes at Spa (Qualifying report)
The Friday's final qualifying and Hyperpole session went on smoothly, without any incidents and without any car missing, i.e., even the repaired ELMS Mercedes-AMG was back on track. As hugely expected, the top Hypercars finally broke the magic 2-minute limit at Spa (partially thanks to the track resurface completed following 2022 works). Unfortunately for fans of other makes, it was the Ferrari one-two-three, despite being hit by BOP after the successful start of the season at Qatar and Imola. The only car hit more by BOP in the field are the Toyotas, whose only advantage against Ferrari is energy per stint, which cannot influence one-lap times. But all the others are simply on the better node of BOP, but Ferrari is still flying.
Hyperpole session, so no Aston Martins – as expected, though they were pretty close to the rest, closer than in Imola. There were also no Porsches. And no Toyotas. The only other unsuccessful one of the rest was the BMW, which was hit by track limits.
Peugeot, with the most favourable BOP, qualified from 2nd to Hyperpole (2:00.4), but despite improving to 2:00.218 in the Hyperpole, it was not enough for the improving Ferraris, which ended with Fuoco (1:59.6), Kubica (1:59.9) and Giovinazzi (2:00.201). Cadillac had decent qualifying, 5th and 10th; the Alpines were 6th and 9th, with the remaining post delegated to the sole BMW (8th).
In GT3, there was no McLaren, no Corvette, and, of course, no Mercedes-AMG or Iron Dames in the top 10 for GT3 Hyperpole. One of the BMWs also stood out. Hyperpole then turned into a Lexus and Mustang benefit until the last minute, when an Aston Martin in the hands of Eduardo Baricello took second behind Finn Gehrsitz in Lexus no. 78 and moved the two Ford Mustangs to the second row. Ferrari managed to do the 5th best time, but the fastest car from the previous two sessions (P3 and Q) scored only the 7th grid spot in the hands of Simon Mann in the Hyperpole session.
The race starts tomorrow at 2 o'clock, and we would be really surprised if the main influence were not made by some kind of SC or other "safety" interventions, which happened the last two years, always working against Ferrari. But if Ferrari won three in a row, what would it mean for BOP at Le Mans? And will Porsche finally get a more favourable BOP for Le Mans if the current implementation is based on the last three races, none of which proved really good for Porsche (at least in terms of outright lap speed)? So should that create an impact on Le Mans BOP?
In any case, Ferrari is still among the main favourites for tomorrow's win, though with the general equality of the entire field and some BOP-related stint energy not favouring Ferraris, we can still expect rather close racing and likely surprising results tomorrow.
Sunday Race
After two warming-up laps, the race started about a minute after 2 o'clock in front of a huge crowd, the large one seen at Spa for a sports car race outside the 24-hour classics. Provisionally reported as nearly one hundred thousand. It was warm and sunny, with no worries about rain, wet tyres, setup and related things.
The Ferrari started from the top three spots and maintained them for only 9 laps. The start went smoothly, with no collision and the early parts of the race, with very close battles throughout the field being correct, without damages, except for one factory Porsche being touched by Cadillac no. 38, which then had to serve a drive-through penalty. Alpine no. 36, both Peugeots (one of them starting from the second row) and BMW no. 15 were running very close to the Ferraris. But the Alpine proved strongest. First it overtook the Peugeot no. 94, which was very close to the private Ferrari no. 83 in the early laps. But it was the Alpine that broke among the Ferraris on lap 10.
It was not all from the Alpine. Four laps later, no. 36 easily took over the Ferrari no. 51 and was closing gap on leading no. 51. In the meantime, Aston Martins were still the slowest but definitely performed better than in Imola. Following the mentioned collision of Porsche no. 5 and related penalty for Cadillac no. 38, both Astons were three places from the end of the Hypercar field and started closing on the private Porsche no. 99 of Proton. Perhaps they had some issues and retired not long after stopping on the track.
At the top, the Alpine no. 36 was closing the leading Ferrari no. 50, while Ferrari no. 83 was losing one place after another until it went to the pits. It returned ahead of the GT field only to return to the pit lane after 3 more laps and stay in the garage for more than one hour. Then it finished last, desperately, but still won the cup for private Hypercar entrants.
Regular pit stops changed the order here and there, especially considering how close the field was running for most of the race. Regardless of that, the Alpine no. 36 was shining and took over the remaining Ferrari on lap 65 and led the race until the second safety car intervention. As usual, they were a very unpleasant influence on the race, spoiling the efforts of both Ferraris and the Alpine. The first SC was caused by a spinning BMW GT3, which was suddenly retired. At the same time, also one of the well-running Lexuses stopped by the track and had to be removed. After the restart the Alpine and Ferraris again started moving ahead of the rest. But the McLaren was hit and posted to the barriers rather heavily. The field was once again put together, helping partially Aston Martins, which lost most time during the pit stops then on the track, it seemed.
During this time of the second SC, we moved from La Source to Raidillon, and during that time, the race was restarted, and it was Peugeot no. 93 that somehow appeared in the lead. Unfortunately for Peugeot, which had a very good race so far, another Virtual Safety Car and then Safety Car were introduced just after they refuelled, while the entire rest of the field pitted during the VSC and gained a huge advantage against the sole Peugeot. So unlike last year when an early pit stop in combination of the SC and red flag brought an undeserved victory to Porsche, this time an early pit stop completly killed Peugeot's chances for a podium finish after an excellent drive so far. At least for the leading no. 93. The other car had a decent run until a late collision with BMW no. 20, which led to a broken suspension and Peugeot retirement. The number 93 could never recover from this stupid VCS and ended the race behind points in 11th. It is really a shame; Peugeot deserved a much better result here. By the way, the third SC period was caused by another McLaren being hit by an Aston Martin GT into the barriers. This time it was less destructive, and the car returned sooner than various SC procedures, including pass-around, were finally finished.
After the Peugeot demise, the Alpine led for several laps, but following the next series of pit stops, the factory Ferraris were back in command. Now it was number 51 in the lead, before no. 50 earned this position back in lap 100. Then the second Ferrari, no. 51, had some good fights with BMW no. 20 and the better of Alpine no. 36. The BMW even ran 2nd for 10 laps but actually never appeared in the lead sequence, unlike, for example, Toyota no. 8, which ran out of the refuelling sequence, following it early tactic pit stop in the first hour. This put them in to the lead in laps 124-128 and also helped them avoid a final splash & dash to gain a strong 4th place for Toyota. This was possibly the maximum the Toyota team could have hoped for after having the worst BOP setup for this race. However, even Ferrari was hit by BOP for this race but was still flying.
The end of the race was much about the strategy. Also, any longer FCY or even SC could help several teams help to save some energy and avoid the final splash & dash, but it did not happen. Well, there were two short FCY and possibly helped the second Ferrari no. 50 to save fuel and finish second ahead of the well-running Alpine no. 36. The Ferrari no. 51 dominated the final stages of the race, and even a short pit stop could not change anything about its win. Need to say that the difference between the top 3 cars was only 5 seconds. But there was no doubt about the winner in the last lap; they safely completed the final 3-4 laps after the splash & dash at moderate speed, not risking anything.
Cadillacs also improved during the last hour, with one of the cars running even 2nd with less than 10 laps before the finish. But the splash & dash settled both cars in positions 5th and 6th, which could be considered an excellent result following a really average start and early part of the races, where they performed nearly as badly as in Imola. With BMW retiring their better car, no. 20, due to brake problems and Peugeot's disaster already mentioned, the next best make in the finish was Porsche's 7th and 9th, sandwiching today's less successful Alpine no. 35. The final point-awarding position, 10th, was inherited by BMW no. 15, which must have been a huge disappointment for the manufacturer after having a very good race with touches of possible victory.
It was surprisingly Aston Martin no. 007 which was running 10th, even some 7 minutes before the end of the race. But due to needed refuelling they could not enjoy the first points – only an early stop of the race or another SC, as we mentioned before, could help them to maintain this position until the very end. In any case, it was a very nice effort by Aston Martin this time, and let's hope they will become even stronger as the season progresses.
The GT class underlined theoretical Ferrari dominance, though it was far from easy in both classes for them, having both cars on the podium, while the 2nd spot went to the Ford Mustang of team Proton.
With the provisionally 2nd BMW in the championship now failing to get more than 1 point, Ferrari is now in a huge lead with 136 points, Toyota moved to second with 71 points, followed by BMW with 64 and Alpine, after two third places, 4th with 34 points. The next race is the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, with more points awarded. And then the championship will move outside Europe. Unless Ferrari completely fails at Le Mans (after two wins in a row), it would be very difficult for anyone to take the Manufacturers Championship from them.
Note: The official announced crowd was exactly 98 874 paying spectators.
