WEC 2024 – 6 hours of Imola: Toyota wins, cold shower for Ferrari

The 6 Hours of Imola got off to a chaotic start with several cars involved in various incidents before and at the first corner. The #94 Peugeot 9X8 of Paul di Resta, the #15 Team WRT BMW of Marco Wittmann and the #35 and #36 Alpine A424s of Charles Milesi and Matthieu Vaxiviere were involved. The Peugeot 9X8, which was showing off its new wing here, spun after being hit by the Alpine, but was able to continue its journey after a quick stop.

Ferrari drinks from a cup

Ferrari had good race pace and, at the halfway point, were leading with their factory 499Ps doing themselves no favors by engaging in a fierce battle on the track, but the Italian manufacturer lost everything when the rain came down. Italian Round. As the competition raced to the pits, three cars (2 factory + customer) remained on soft tires on an increasingly wet track. When they finally entered the pit lane, they were late and plunged into the standings.

Toyota was the first to react to the rain by switching its two GR010 hybrids to wet tires on lap 135, while Porsche also opted to enter No. 6 on the same lap. Two laps later, the #5 Porsche also had to change wet tyres, but the Ferrari continued to circle the track with all three cars, including the third #83 AF Corse machine, losing between 8 and 12 seconds around. It was only on lap 139 that the three Ferraris pitted on wet tyres, a delay costing more than a minute compared to the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid!

Koba opposes Estre

Toyota Gazoo Racing claimed an unexpected victory at the 6 Hours of Imola thanks to Kamui Kobayashi beating Kevin Estre late in the race. Once the rain passed, the trail dried out a bit. By the time all the leading drivers were back on slicks, Kobayashi was nearly 10 seconds ahead of Estre, but, forced to save fuel during his final lap, allowed Estre to close down the straight.

However, the #6 Porsche was given a five-second penalty for overtaking under the safety car, meaning Estre would have to overtake and extend his lead by five seconds to take the win. Villeneuve’s minor off-piste in the final laps seemed to dampen Estre’s performance, and the Frenchman and team-mates André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor were eventually classified seven seconds off the finish, including penalties.

Remember the first victory of Nyck de Vries, who was excellent and rewarded us with a great victory in the Ferrari at Rivazza. There is life after F1!)

Peugeot wins its first points

Matt Campbell sent the No. 5 car he shares with Frederic Makowiecki and Michael Christensen back to third, 25 seconds behind the winning Toyota.

The best Ferrari was the #50 of Antonio Fuoco, Niklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina, fourth after Fuoco passed the #8 Toyota of Brendon Hartley following a Tamburello brake failure.

Toyota No. The No. 8 that Hartley shared with Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi followed almost the same strategy as its winning sister car, but Hartley lost two minutes on cold tires late in the race.

The remaining two Ferraris came in seventh and eighth, with the #51 car of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi ahead of the third row #83 AF Corse of Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman and Yifei Ye.

Peugeot took two points with 9th place and number 93 during a difficult first race for the modified 9X8, the victim of a collision with Alpine at the start. However, the new 9×8 was heavier on the board, deprived of Bop. Future corrections should return to the lioness. The #94 was delayed by numerous problems and finished 15th after 6 laps.

Ferrari strategic fiasco

Ferrari’s racing and testing team principal Giuliano Salvi revealed that a combination of inaccurate weather forecasts and a communication error that made it impossible to relay strategies between the cars was responsible for the mishap.

“We thought the weather would be temporary. The pilots saw that only the last sector was important, but the rest of the railway was manageable. But the situation did not turn out in the right direction. Here we need to review our chain of communication because it was definitely a mistake . We considered this (decision) on certain circumstances that were not correct (…) At the moment it is not clear why, but we should have divided the cars and we tried to do that, but we need to go through all the procedures in detail because this was a mistake.”

Doubled BMW WRT to GT3

In the LMGT3 category, Team WRT made an excellent strategic class in changing conditions to reach the finish with its pair of BMW M4 GT3s. While the track was wet enough to force the entire Hypercar field on wet tires, there was more division within the LMGT3 field, with the TF Sport Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs and the AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 No. 55 among others. team to make changes.

On the other hand, WRT left both of its cars running on the skid throughout, which turned the battle for class honors into a battle for victory between Augusto Farfus in the #31 car and Maxime Martin in the #46 car. Ultimately, a penalty for the number 46 car for failing to comply with car safety procedures allowed Farfus, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung to take an outright victory 22 seconds ahead of Martin, Valentino Rossi and Ahmad Al Harthy. The No. 92 Manthey Porsche of Alex Malykhin, Joel Sturm and Klaus Bachler finished third, after returning to slicks, one lap behind the BMWs.

Space

Results here

In the drivers’ championship, Estre, Lotterer and Vanthoor share the lead (1st Qatar, 2nd Imola) with 56 points, followed by the Toyota Kobayashi-Conway-De Vries team with 40 points and the 2nd Porsche Penske team Makowiecki-Campbell-Christensen with 39 points.

In terms of manufacturers, Porsche has 57 points against Toyota’s 48 and Ferrari’s 31, which is already in front of the wall for the championship.