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<\/p>\nMalthe Jakobsen confirmed his status as one of the FIA World Endurance Championship\u2019s brightest rising stars at Spa-Francorchamps today, producing a scintillating lap to secure Peugeot\u2019s maiden pole position in the series<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Earlier on in the Hypercar qualifying session, that kind of result had looked far less likely, when the Dane spun at high speed at the top of Raidillon on his \u2018out\u2019 lap from the pits, fortunately avoiding any impact but obliging him to return to the box for a fresh set of tyres.<\/p>\n
Determined to atone for his error, Jakobsen subsequently rejoined the track to post the second-quickest effort, sandwiched between the two Alpines. In the ten-minute Hyperpole shootout, the 22-year-old then soared to the top of the timesheets behind the wheel of the #94 Team Peugeot TotalEnergies 9X8 Hypercar that he shares with fellow young gun Th\u00e9o Pourchaire and former FIA World Endurance Champion, Lo\u00efc Duval.<\/p>\n
The result represented the first pole for \u2018The Lions\u2019 in any international endurance racing series in 15 years and first in world championship competition since 1992, and Jakobsen was unsurprisingly delighted with his headline-grabbing achievement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely wasn\u2019t the ideal start to the session!\u201d he joked. \u201cA bump caught me out and unfortunately I had a spin; luckily, I didn\u2019t hit anything, but at times like that, your heart stops for a moment and then I immediately felt some vibrations. We decided to box for new tyres, and luckily, we still had time to do two build laps and a proper \u2018push\u2019 lap, then the break between qualifying and Hyperpole was good to take a deep breath and get the focus back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the best feeling to drive around this track on low fuel and new tyres, and I\u2019m very happy for the team. This is a great boost for everybody in terms of motivation to keep working hard. It really shows that even though we\u2019ve had a challenging past couple of years, everything is possible and you should never, ever give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
As in the curtain-raising contest at Imola last month, the margins at the sharp end of the field were miniscule, with less than eight-hundredths-of-a-second blanketing the top three around the 7.004km \u2018Ardennes rollercoaster\u2019 and an unprecedented 0.664s covering the entire top ten. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Will Stevens pushed Jakobsen hardest as the Brit put Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA\u2019s FP3 pace-setting #12 entry on the front row of the grid, a scant 0.043s adrift of his Peugeot rival.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alpine Endurance Team was ultimately not quite able to replicate its stellar turn-of-speed\u00a0 from the first part of the session, but the pair of striking blue A424 Hypercars will nonetheless start from the second row in tomorrow\u2019s six-hour contest, following excellent efforts from Frenchmen Charles Milesi and Jules Gounon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On his series debut, veteran of four Le Mans starts Jack Aitken underlined the pace of Cadillac\u2019s V-Series.R by bagging fifth spot, ahead of Aston Martin THOR Team\u2019s brace of Valkyries and the best-placed Ferrari 499P, with Antonio Fuoco managing just eighth in the #50 scarlet prototype.<\/p>\n
The Italian was the only Prancing Horse driver to progress to Hyperpole, as Robert Kubica (13th in the #83) and defending world champion Antonio Giovinazzi (15th in the #51) failed to advance to the top ten showdown. The Ferrari duo was joined in the \u2018drop zone\u2019 by championship leader Toyota, with Kamui Kobayashi 12th in the #7 TR010 Hybrid and Brendon Hartley in the Imola-winning #8 car 1.5 seconds adrift of the pace in 16th.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps,\u00a0round two of the 2026 FIA WEC campaign, will get underway at 14:00 CEST tomorrow (Saturday, 9 May).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Malthe Jakobsen confirmed his status as one of the FIA World Endurance Championship\u2019s brightest rising stars at Spa-Francorchamps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9887,7,9882,9885,9879,9868,9878,9891,9890,4031,9877,9869,9883,9880,9889,5917,9866,9867,9884,9881,9876,9886,9888,9872,9870,9871,9875,9874,9873],"class_list":{"0":"post-14716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-action-for-road-safety","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-circuit","11":"tag-connectivity","12":"tag-eprix","13":"tag-f1","14":"tag-fe","15":"tag-fia","16":"tag-fia-president","17":"tag-formula-1","18":"tag-formula-e","19":"tag-formula-one","20":"tag-hill-climb","21":"tag-historic","22":"tag-jean-todt","23":"tag-mobility","24":"tag-motor-sport","25":"tag-motorsport","26":"tag-off-road","27":"tag-rally","28":"tag-rallycross","29":"tag-road-safety","30":"tag-todt","31":"tag-touring-car","32":"tag-wec","33":"tag-world-endurance-championship","34":"tag-world-rallycross","35":"tag-world-rx","36":"tag-wtcc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116541393896391831","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}