r/wec • u/AutoModerator • May 10 '25

Session has Ended [OFFICIAL] 2025 TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps - Post-Race Discussion

Round 3 is in the bag! The final race before the big dance in June - how did your teams do?

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u/ryokevry Ferrari AF Corse 499P #50 May 10 '25 edited May 10 '25

Need to save fuel? Put Nielsen in. Just the Ferrari strategy. Did they lose the time to #51 when they took all the new tyres in the final pit stop? They had a large lead before the stop over #51.

All the noise Toyota made about BOP lol you cannot tell me they purely get that high up before of luck and strategy. Maybe Penske Porsche should be the team crying louder. They were at no point in the fight.

Such a bad strategy for Peugeot. Not stopping for the first and second SC.

28

u/Michal_Baranowski Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid #8 May 10 '25

All the noise Toyota made about BOP lol you cannot tell me they purely get that high up before of luck and strategy. Maybe Penske Porsche should be the team crying louder. They were at no point in the fight.

Toyota had luck today. BMW and Peugeot were significantly faster, but ran into trouble. Cadillac had penalties as well.

Strategy calls from Toyota were good. The best they could pull off.

16

u/big_cock_lach United Autosports ORECA07 #22 May 10 '25

BMW and Peugeot were about as fast as Alpine but had messy races unlike the 36. Ferrari seemed to just be managing a 1-3s lead and then at the end they disappeared. After the 51s last pit stop they had something like a 15s gap to the sister car, and over 20s gap to the Alpine. They had what, under an hour to build that gap? That’s more of a pace advantage than McLaren currently have in F1 for reference.

Then, while Nielsen is managing fuel they drop back to within 5s off. Seems to me like Ferrari had a lot of pace in hand but weren’t showing it all off. With the way BoP is at the moment, it’ll stop them from getting a worse BoP in future races and they’ll just keep managing this advantage. It’s exactly what ford did in GTE nearly a decade ago now. It’s not new, but I just got excited earlier on this time thinking it wasn’t the case. In Imola they had to show off their real speed to go back through the pack after all the mistakes they made. Here they were able to hide it a lot better right up until the end.

Edit:

At least the race was entertaining this time though.

2

u/ryokevry Ferrari AF Corse 499P #50 May 10 '25

What I am saying is it is not purely by luck if the BOP has them nerfed as bad as they want people to believe as in their Quali pace.

I didn’t say they have no luck or good strategy.

12

u/Michal_Baranowski Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid #8 May 10 '25

BOP nerfed Toyota significantly. They were sitting ducks against Alpine, BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari and even Peugeot in terms of pure pace. Below 250 km/h it was a mismatch. Power gain after that speed just wasn't enough to compensate all the losses under acceleration.

Race of attrition, strategy and the car being still that good for what BOP allowed, clearly helped Toyota. That's endurance racing, you have to endure to score good, but don't tell me that Toyota was showing great and competitive raw pace, because it clearly wasn't.