WEC: Pole in São Paulo for Cadillac drivers

      This weekend, the fourth round of the WEC season is taking place at Interlagos, and as a result of the qualifying session, the entire front row on the starting grid of the Brazilian racetrack is occupied by Cadillac hypercars. Moreover, both crews include former Formula 1 drivers.

      Starting from pole position for the "6 Hours of São Paulo" will be the sports prototype with the number 12 – this is the car of Will Stevens, who raced for the Manor Marussia team in 2014, and Norman Nato, while their teammates from Cadillac Team Jota, Earl Bamber, Jack Aitken, and Sébastien Bourdais, who was once a driver for Toro Rosso, will start from the second position.

      Interestingly, last year, the Cadillac #12 crew also set the best qualifying time at this track, but then was penalized and started from third position.

      Just at the end of the session, Stevens completed a lap in 1:23.041, beating his teammates by just 0.048 seconds – this marks the fifth pole for Cadillac during their time competing in the Hypercar category of the World Endurance Championship.

      “A huge thank you to the team and Cadillac for providing us with a good car,” Will commented after qualifying. “This is a very challenging track, and the key point is to warm up the tires to the right temperature before the fast lap. We knew we would achieve this towards the end of the session, and I managed to put in a pretty decent lap. Let's hope we can maintain the first position in the race.”

      Starting from the second row are the crews from Alpine and WRT BMW, while the Genesis Magma Racing drivers, the new factory team from Hyundai, showed a respectable fifth result – their hypercar GMR-001 is already capable of good speed in its debut season. Matthieu Jaminet stood out in qualifying, having been fast in practice as well.

      Against this backdrop, the favorites look unimpressive – the factory team Toyota cars, leading the championship, couldn't even make it to the final qualifying session and will start from distant positions – 14th and 16th.

      The reigning WEC champions also did not shine – the best among the Ferrari crews was the trio of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, and Niklas Nielsen, who achieved the 7th result. The independent team AF Corse, competing with the same Ferrari 499P sports prototype, will start from 10th position, driven by Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Phil Hanson.

      The race in São Paulo starts on Sunday at 11:30 local time – in Moscow, it will be 17:30 at that time.