MOTORSPORT – PEUGEOT TotalEnergies captured their first-ever pole position in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) yesterday after taking the leading overall grid position for today’s Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.
Malthe Jakobsen had the honour of powering Peugeot’s #94 9X8 Hypercar to the top of the Hyperpole timesheet with a fastest lap of two minutes 00.653 seconds. He is sharing the duties behind the wheel of their contender with teammates Loic Duval and Theo Pourchaire.
“It’s the best feeling to drive around this track on low fuel and new tyres, and I’m very happy for the team,” Jakobsen said post-session.
“This is a great boost for everybody in terms of motivation to keep working hard. It really shows that even though we’ve had a challenging past couple of years, everything is possible and you should never, ever give up.”
Jakobsen claimed pole by the narrowest of margins in a hotly contested Hyperpole, beating out Cadillac Hertz Team Jota’s #12 V-Series.R – driven by Will Stevens, Norman Nato, and Louis Deletraz – by a mere 0.043 seconds.
Alpine Endurance Team’s #35 and #36 A424 Hypercars followed to secure row two. Their #35 crew of Antonio Felix da Costa, Charles Milesi, and Ferdinand Habsburg were 0.078s from the pole-sitters, while the #36 trio of Frederic Makowiecki, Jules Gounon, and Victor Martins were 0.185s behind.
The Hypercars’ Hyperpole session – featuring the top 10 from the category’s qualifying runs held – featured Cadillac Hertz Team Jota’s #38 V-Series.R in fifth, while from sixth through 10th, respectively were the Aston Martin Thor Team’s #009 and #007 Valkyries, the #50 499P of Ferrari AF Corse, the #93 9X8 of Peugeot, and the #15 M Hybrid V8 of BMW M Team WRT.
Meanwhile, securing pole in the LMGT3 class were Akkodis ASP Team’s Tom Van Rompuy, Hadrien David, and Esteban Masson. They had a fastest lap of 2:16.612 in their #78 Lexus RC F LMGT3 – going 0.194s better than Heart of Racing Team’s Ian James, Zacharie Robichon, and Mattia Drudi, competing in their #27 Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGT3.
Set to start from the second row are Proton Competition’s #77 Ford Mustang LMGT3 driven by Eric Powell, Ben Tuck, and Sebastian Priaulx, who were 0.212s off the pace, and Akkodis’ other crew of Petru Umbrarescu, Clemens Schmid, and Jose Maria Lopez in their #87 Lexus.
Also in the LMGT3’s Hyperpole session and qualified fifth to 10th were Proton’s #88 Ford, Vista AF Corse’s #21 Ferrari 296 LMGT3 Evo, Team WRT’s #32 BMW M4 LMGT3 Evo, Iron Lynx’s #61 Mercedes-AMG LMGT3, Manthey DK Engineering’s #91 Porsche 911 GT3 R LMGT3, and Racing Team Turkey by TF’s #34 Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R.
Today’s Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps is scheduled to flag off at 3pm, Bahrain time.
This weekend’s meeting is the second of eight rounds in the 2026 WEC season. Spa will be followed by the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans in France on June 13 and 14. Stops will then be made at Interlagos in Brazil on July 12, at Austin in the US on September 6, and at Fuji in Japan on September 27, before the WEC arrives in the Gulf.
The campaign’s penultimate meeting, the rescheduled Qatar 1,812km, will then take place on October 24, leading up to the WEC’s 2026 finale, the Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain, scheduled for November 6 and 7 at Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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