Imola WEC Showdown: Teams Gear Up for a Weekend of High-Speed Endurance Racing

The second race of the WEC, the world endurance championship, is scheduled this weekend on the Imola track: tomorrow will see the start of free practices 1 and 2, Saturday will be the time for free practice 3, qualifications, and hyperpole, both for LM GT3 and Hypercars, while on Sunday, at 1 PM sharp, the 6 hours of the racetrack dedicated to Enzo and Dino Ferrari will begin. Speaking of Ferrari, there is a desire for redemption for the Maranello team, playing at home; but Toyota too, up until the opening race the team with the reference Hypercar, wants to make a comeback. On the other hand, Porsche's overwhelming success in Qatar led to a revision of the BoP, or balance of performance, to level the playing field which, due to the characteristics of the track, in the first seasonal appointment contributed not a little to the performance of the 963 LMDh. Thus, among the Hypercars, Ferrari is ready to climb back up, and will also be able to rely on the third 499P, number 83, aiming for victory among the independent teams. While Toyota with more power and less ballast will be able to return to being a protagonist. There's the unknown factor of Peugeot with the revised prototype now equipped with a rear wing, while Cadillac can benefit from the best weight/power ratio. The Porsches, on paper, have all the potential to always be competitive, but it's clear that now the values seem to have levelled. There's always a lot of curiosity around the Lamborghini team, as well as for BMW and Alpine, dealing with totally new projects, and also for Isotta Fraschini, a historic name in motorsport that wants to return to prominence. In the LMGT3 class, Valentino Rossi is announced as a protagonist, and with his BMW M4 GT3 aims for the podium that narrowly escaped him in Qatar. To secure one of the three steps, however, in addition to dealing with Porsche and Aston Martin, at the top of the category in the first appointment, he will also have to contend with the Ferrari 296 GT3s of AF Corse.