Antonio Felix da Costa came third in GTE Pro qualifying for the TOTAL Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, but thinks the #82 BMW M8 GTE could have been even higher on the grid.
Contrary to other teams, the pair of BMWs did not go out for a third run in the qualifying session. Afterwards, the Portuguese driver told Motorsport Week the two runs for himself and team-mate Augusto Farfus were not enough to keep the car on the top spot.
"It would have if everyone did the usual, which is use two sets of new tyres," said Da Costa. "After everyone went out on new tyres, we were P1. But some teams took a little bit of a gamble, predicting the rain tomorrow, which I think they’re actually correct, it will rain. And they went out again on another new set of tyres and they improved again."
"So one to one, we were P1, and we were the quickest which is nice, but we didn’t use an extra set of new tyres like the others, so it’s okay."
Despite the strong qualifying pace for both BMWs, the Lisbon native thinks he'll struggle during the race itself.
"The car has the pace on one lap. Since Fuji we’ve been very quick on one lap. On a longer stint we struggle a bit on tyre deg, in the wet even more. So I anticipate a very hard race tomorrow, but it’s gonna be fun."
Da Costa did give a suggestion for how he would like the race to go: "Well, let’s just do one stint, stay in the top three, and then… red flag."
The 2019 TOTAL Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps kicks off at 13.30pm local time.
Discussion about this post