Calado: Ferrari "could have fought Toyota for victory" at WEC Spa

The Briton, who sealed third place on the final lap of the Spa 6 Hours with Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi, told Autosport that “maybe we could have given them a fight” but for the three extra pitstops the #51 Ferrari 499P made in comparison with the winning Toyota.

“There was one point where I thought we could have fought with the Toyotas,” said Calado, who took the chequered flag 1m09s down on the winning car shared by Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez.

“The positive thing as well as the podium was that we were a lot closer to the pace of the Toyota.

“Without all the little things that went wrong, maybe we could have given them a fight.

“There were a few strategy decisions that didn’t play into our hands and we had two emergency pitstops; we got really unlucky and lost a lot of lap time.”

Both the third-place Ferrari and the sister 499P Le Mans Hypercar shared by Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina started on wet-weather tyres and had to pit early in the race for slicks.

Calado’s #51 Ferrari AF Corse entry subsequently made two unscheduled pitstops when the pits were closed as the result of yellow-flag cautions.

Giovinazzi had to pit when the team detected a deflating tyre, which resulted from a rim damaged in a side-by-side contact with one of the factory Porsche 963 LMDhs, during the third hour.

Because the race was under Full Course Yellow, the team was allowed only to change the damaged wheel.

#51 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Pier Guidi subsequently had to make an emergency pitstop for a 5s splash of fuel in the fifth hour, during the last of four safety cars to interrupt the race.

Calado reckoned that Ferrari’s showing at Spa bodes well for the double-points Le Mans 24 Hours WEC round on 10/11 June, pointing to the speed of the 499P in sectors 1 and 2 at the Belgian track.

“It seems we are good in the high-speed sections and we know Le Mans is pretty high speed,” he said.

“It seemed we made a step forward this weekend: we’ve worked super hard to optimise ourselves a little bit, especially on our side of the garage to try to improve our pace and our long-run situation.”

Calado said he was “over the moon for the team” after he and his team-mates added to the podiums notched up by the sister car at the Sebring and Portimao rounds in March and April respectively.

He added that he was “disappointed for the other car”, which Fuoco crashed on cold tyres as he left the pits early in the fifth hour while running third behind the two Toyotas.