Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco told media at the post-qualifying press conference that track conditions and weather are the reasons for slower laptimes in qualifying, compared to last year’s race.
“I think compared to last year we have a different condition. Last year was much cooler,” said the Italian.
The #50 Ferrari 499P driver took pole with a 2:02.600, over half a second ahead of Porsche’s Matt Campbell in second.
“Even if you look at GT, they are much slower than us here, so our track condition and maybe weather. But maybe the track condition isn’t super clean.”
Last year’s pole lap, set by Toyota’s Kamui Kobayashi, was a 2:00.812. This means Fuoco’s lap this year was 1.8 seconds slower — quite a gap.
Cooler weather conditions mean the cars can run harder, because the engines are at less risk of overheating, and tyres don’t overheat, staying in the ‘window’ for longer.
Fuoco, though, was pleased with his lap.
“I think overall was a good lap. I’m pretty happy with with myself and I think this would start good position to start tomorrow, but we also know that tomorrow is going to be really strong race with the tyre management, so we try to do our best and then we see tomorrow.”
With Spa known to be a high-energy circuit putting lots of stress into the rubber, tyre management and degradation is the topic of conversation at Spa. Fuoco reiterated that keeping the tyres alive in the race will be a challenge.
“I think it’s going to be really tough on the tyre side. So we need to manage, the best we can. We saw during the free practice that it was really hard, so we try to do our best.
“I think we work quite well during the session, to improve our car for the race and then we need to wait tomorrow to see where we are, compared to the others,” he concluded.
Discussion about this post