SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium – The final hour of practice for the 2026 TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps concluded on Friday morning, leaving the Hypercar field separated by mere hundredths of a second. After Alpine’s surprising dominance on Thursday, the established guard reclaimed the spotlight in a session that proved the grid is tighter than ever heading into the afternoon’s Hyperpole.
Hypercar: Cadillac Pips Ferrari in Final Sprints
While Alpine had the headlines yesterday, Hertz Team Jota and Cadillac showed their hand during Free Practice 3. The session was a frantic dash for performance data as teams optimized their setups for the cooler morning air.
Will Stevens produced a blistering lap late in the session, steering the #12 Cadillac V-Series.R to the top of the timesheets with a 2:02.379. However, the margin of victory was razor-thin:
- The Gap: Stevens was just 0.023 seconds faster than the #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Kubica.
- The Top Four: In an incredible display of Balance of Performance (BoP) parity, the top four cars—representing Cadillac, Ferrari, and Aston Martin—were separated by less than one-tenth of a second.
Harry Tincknell confirmed that the Aston Martin Valkyrie is a genuine podium contender by placing the #007 entry in P3, just 0.090s off the lead pace. Meanwhile, the Alpine A424s, which dominated FP2, had a more reserved morning, finishing P8 and P10 respectively as they shifted focus to long-run tire degradation.
LMGT3: Manthey Porsche Hits Trouble
The LMGT3 class saw a shift in momentum as teams grappled with the high-speed demands of the 7km circuit. The session was led by the #91 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R, which looked peerless in the technical middle sector.
However, the session ended in frustration for the Porsche camp. The sister #92 Manthey PureRxcing car, driven by Alex Malykhin, suffered a heavy excursion at Turn 8 (Bruxelles). The car became beached in the gravel trap, triggering a Full Course Yellow that effectively ended any final qualifying simulations for the rest of the field.
Disruptions and Full Course Yellows
FP3 was far from a clean run for the 35-car entry. Race control was kept busy with three separate Full Course Yellow (FCY) periods:
- Debris Management: Two brief FCYs were called to clear carbon fiber debris from Turn 2 (Eau Rouge) and Turn 10 (Pouhon), likely shed from the aggressive floor-scraping setups teams are running to maximize downforce.
- The Final Stoppage: The final ten minutes were largely lost to the recovery of the #92 Porsche, leaving many drivers unable to complete their low-fuel “glory laps.”