{"id":1416,"date":"2026-05-08T11:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2026-05-08T11:48:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:48:24","slug":"cadillac-strikes-back-ultra-close-fp3-sets-the-stage-for-spa-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/cadillac-strikes-back-ultra-close-fp3-sets-the-stage-for-spa-qualifying\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillac Strikes Back: Ultra-Close FP3 Sets the Stage for Spa Qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium<\/strong> \u2013 The final hour of practice for the <strong>2026 TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps<\/strong> concluded on Friday morning, leaving the Hypercar field separated by mere hundredths of a second. After Alpine\u2019s 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&#8217;s Hyperpole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Hypercar: Cadillac Pips Ferrari in Final Sprints<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Alpine had the headlines yesterday, <strong>Hertz Team Jota<\/strong> and <strong>Cadillac<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Will Stevens<\/strong> produced a blistering lap late in the session, steering the <strong>#12 Cadillac V-Series.R<\/strong> to the top of the timesheets with a <strong>2:02.379<\/strong>. However, the margin of victory was razor-thin:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>The Gap:<\/strong> Stevens was just <strong>0.023 seconds<\/strong> faster than the <strong>#83 AF Corse Ferrari<\/strong> of Robert Kubica.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Top Four:<\/strong> In an incredible display of Balance of Performance (BoP) parity, the top four cars\u2014representing Cadillac, Ferrari, and Aston Martin\u2014were separated by less than <strong>one-tenth of a second<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harry Tincknell<\/strong> confirmed that the <strong>Aston Martin Valkyrie<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>LMGT3: Manthey Porsche Hits Trouble<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 <strong>#91 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R<\/strong>, which looked peerless in the technical middle sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the session ended in frustration for the Porsche camp. The sister <strong>#92 Manthey PureRxcing<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Disruptions and Full Course Yellows<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Debris Management:<\/strong> 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.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Final Stoppage:<\/strong> The final ten minutes were largely lost to the recovery of the #92 Porsche, leaving many drivers unable to complete their low-fuel &#8220;glory laps.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/038_Doc-38-Free-Practice-3-Provisional-Classification.pdf\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/038_Doc-38-Free-Practice-3-Provisional-Classification.pdf\">RESULTS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium \u2013 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\u2019s surprising dominance on Thursday, the established guard reclaimed the spotlight in a session that proved the grid is tighter than ever heading [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1419,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions\/1419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giornalemotori.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}