The FIA World Endurance Championship hasn't visited Interlagos for 10 years. The track, located in Sao Paulo, is known for throwing up good races — the last race held here, in 2014, culminated in a battle between Porsche and Audi, with a large crash for Mark Webber crowning things off.
From the data generated by free practice 2 for this year's 6 Hours of Sao Paulo, it looks like we're in for another corker. We've taken each car's top 20% lap times and created averages, in an attempt to peak bebehind the curtain and see what we're in for on Sunday.
The frontrunners
As you can see, the #8 Toyota was the fastest car on average in free practice 2, over a tenth quicker than AF Corse's satellite #83 Ferrari entry.
In fact, both factory Toyotas were faster than the factory Ferraris. The #7 Toyota was third quickest, with the #51 Ferrari fourth and the #50 Ferrari well over half a second off the leading Toyota.
While that may seem concerning, it isn't necessarily a worry. If we look at the averages for each team or manufacturrer, Toyota are almost 3 tenths faster per lap on average than Ferrari.
But, the #50 Ferrari's data is skewing the Ferrari average. Take that car out of the mix and Ferrari are just a smidge over a tenth off Toyota - a gap that could easily be bridged by strategy, drivers, weather, tyre deg, or multiple other variables.
Cadillac are next up, just 0.002 slower than Ferrari when all three of the Italian manufacturers cars are considered. That said, though, Cadillac only has a single car so this is hard to judge. Indeed, in the individual car graph, Cadillac are a good tenth and a half away from the second-fastest Ferrari.
The same goes for Proton, a couple of hundredths off these two. The other customer Porsche team, JOTA with two cars, is ahead of the factory Porsche team, putting all three Porsche-running teams in consecutive order.
While you'd expect the factory team to be quicker than its customers, remember Spa, where both Proton and JOTA were as quick or quicker than the factory Penske-run operation. Seems like, at least from FP2, that it may be exceedingly close between the three.
When you combine all three Porsche teams together, the average is 1:27.543. Alternatively, taking each team's fastest car's average, this comes down slightly to a 1:27.528.
Cadillac will be hoping for a good race — but will have stiff competition. Images: Fabrizio Boldoni / DPPI
Cadillac, then, if it is a tenth up per lap on average over the Porsches, will be hoping for a much better race than it has had at Qatar, Imola and Spa this year, with bad luck or poor pace impacting all three of those races for the American manufacturer.
Plus, at Le Mans, although they led for a considerable amount of time near the end, they eventually finished seventh. That's decent points, but pales when you consider they were behind the factory cars from Toyota, Ferrari, and Porsche — not where the Chip Ganassi-run squad aims to be.
The midfield
The midfield also looks exceedingly close, with just over two tenths covering four teams — BMW, Alpine, Lamborghini, and Peugeot. At best, when considering the teams, they're two tenths away from Porsche and seven tenths off Toyota.
This situation improves when you look at the individual cars. In that perspective, the #20 BMW is the fastest on average, with a 01:27.508 — actually ahead of some of the Porsches. The two Alpines are next up, splitting a Peugeot, with the sole Lamborghini, and the sister BMWs and Peugeots, next.
It is possible, then, that BMW could be mixing it with Porsche and maybe Cadillac, if the #20's average is realistic and representative.
Alpine and Peugeot seem, on average, to be very equal, setting us up for what could be a titanic battle over the six hours between the French rivals. As usual this year, Lamborghini would appear to have the slowest LMDh car as the Italian team gets to grips with prototype racing in the top flight of sportscar racing.
The WEC's two French manufacturers were close on pace in FP2. Images: Javier Jimenez / DPPI, Fabrizio Boldoni / DPPI
Finally, a word for Isotta Fraschini. On average they may be seven tenths or so away from Peugeot, and easily a second and a half slower than Toyota. But the little Italian-French team is steadily improving. Let's not forget they were just six laps down at Le Mans, and finished the race with no major reliability issues — with just a single car in the race. In years past that would have meant a very strong position.
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