Antonio Fuoco delivered Ferrari a near-perfect start to the 6 Hours of Spa weekend, planting the #50 AF Corse 499P at the top of the FP1 timesheets in 2:02.955. It was Fuoco's third consecutive opening-practice fastest lap at the Belgian circuit, a personal Spa habit that has now become part of the WEC's furniture.
The Italian's session-topping run came on a session ended early by a red flag for Yasser Shahin's stoppage at Turn 13, but with all 35 cars completing at least 25 laps before that, the running was enough to read the form board. Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie's Alex Riberas was second in the #009, 0.564 seconds adrift of Fuoco. Frederic Makowiecki put the #36 Alpine A424 third, just four-thousandths of a second behind Riberas. Robert Kubica's #83 sister Ferrari ran fourth at 2:03.650.
The new entries on the Hypercar grid did not embarrass themselves. Mathys Jaubert led the Genesis charge in 13th in the #17 Magma Racing GMR-001, the Korean marque's debut entry in WEC Hypercar, and crucially put 0.180 seconds between his car and the championship-leading #8 Toyota TR010 Hybrid, which finished the session 1.983 seconds off the pace. Toyota's habit of hiding outright pace in opening practice means few in the paddock are reading too much into the Japanese cars' position.
The story behind the timing screen is one of expectation. Ferrari, beaten by Toyota at the previous round at Imola, has been openly chasing redemption at Spa-Francorchamps. The 499P programme has been at its most consistent at high-speed sweeping circuits like Spa and Le Mans since the car's 2023 introduction, and the AF Corse-run factory cars have been the most reliable hypercar pole-snatchers across that span.
For Fuoco himself, this was a continuation of a Spa speciality that has now produced three FP1-toppings in three years. His 2:02.955 was set on softer compounds in the latter half of the session, with a small handful of cars trading times across that single quick window before Shahin's stoppage drew the red flag.
LMGT3 honours went to Charlie Eastwood's #34 Racing Team Turkey Corvette Z06, the Belfast driver setting a 2:18.388 to top the class ahead of Alessio Rovera's AF Corse Ferrari 296 LMGT3 Evo, who was just 0.366 seconds behind. The new-format LMGT3 grid has produced unusually unpredictable midfield results across the early rounds, and Spa's quick blend of corners has historically rewarded the small-margin specialists.
The wider field was unusually compressed. Eight Hypercars sat within 1.5 seconds of the lead, with Cadillac's heavily reshuffled lineup, racing without Alex Lynn this weekend after the Briton's neck injury, sitting just outside that group.
FP2 followed later on Thursday and shifted the pecking order again, with Alpine's Jules Gounon putting the #35 to the top in the second outing. The two practice sessions read as two different competitive maps, which only underlined the tightness of the field heading into Saturday's qualifying. Goodyear, meanwhile, told paddock media at Spa that consistency rather than absolute peak grip would be its priority for the LMP2 and LMGT3 classes, a message that may be tested if rain arrives over the weekend, as is common in the Ardennes.
Fuoco's session-topping run was the perfect Ferrari opener, and a useful early sign that the Imola weekend was not the start of a sustained slide for the Italian programme. The harder questions about whether the 499P can convert that pace into a long-stint advantage over Toyota, and over a much-improved Alpine programme, start at qualifying.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/fuoco-ferrari-499p-spa-wec-fp1-2026). Visit for full coverage.*