Antonio Fuoco credited tyre preparation and warm up for his pole lap at the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, the third round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
“Overall it was a good quali,” said the Italian in the post-qualifying press conference.
“Even through to Hyperpole, the feeling was quite positive. And like last year, I think we are able to manage a bit better the warm up of the tyres, and I think this is where we made the difference compared to the others.
“I think it was quite clear, the preparation, the out lap and the warm up lap. And then after that I think I put quite clean lap together, which today was not really easy with this condition, especially because we only had one push available. So, It was important to do to put everything together and car worked really well today.”
The lap that Fuoco was able to set his pole lap came on his third tour of the circuit, his first representative lap of the Belgian track. And, with the tyres past their optimum window following that 1:59.617 lap, as Fuoco said, it was that lap or nothing.
Fuoco turns focus to race
However, for a 6 hour race, qualifying is not the main focus.
“Now the focus is on tomorrow,” said the #50 Ferrari driver.
“We know it’s going to be a long race, tough race. So we just try to maximise the result of today.
“I think tomorrow we will see a different picture of the race, because many of the competitors are quite strong in the race. So it’s going to be quite tough. They are really really strong.
“So we just need to try to do our best. At the end, for sure the condition will be a bit cooler. So we need arrive there on the best way as possible and just try to do our best and see what we can get out of this race,” he concluded.
The race will start tomorrow, Saturday 10th May, at 2pm local time. With the day obviously cooling in that six hour period as the race heads towards the end time of 8pm local time, the way cars react to changing track conditions will be crucial.
Nevertheless, it is expected to be hot at Spa-Francorchamps for the race, peaking at around 16°C in the mid-afternoon. See the qualifying results on the FIAWEC website.
