After being punted out of the lead on home soil at Imola, Vista AF Corse delivered the perfect riposte in the TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps earlier this month (8-10 May), by charging to its first victory of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship campaign.
The Ferrari 296 LMGT3 was in the mix from the outset in Belgium – round three of the season – with Alessio Rovera lapping second-quickest in FP1 behind the wheel of the #21 entry the Italian shares with François Heriau and Simon Mann. The latter subsequently put the car at the top of the timesheets in FP3 the next morning, before Heriau repeated the feat in the first part of qualifying.
Vista AF Corse ultimately wound up just fifth and seventh on the grid, but the team’s focus was very much on playing the long game – and while Lexus led the initial stages of the six-hour contest, as the clock ticked down, it was Ferrari and Ford that came increasingly to the fore in the re-enactment of an age-old rivalry.
Despite picking up a drive-through penalty for a pit-stop infringement, Rovera, Mann and Heriau were otherwise faultless, and their reward was a first triumph of the campaign – mirroring Ferrari’s Hypercar glory in the Ardennes.
The trio pulled out an advantage of more than 40 seconds by the time the chequered flag fell, with the sister #54 machine battling back from a pair of penalties to round out the rostrum in third, less than two seconds shy of making it a one-two.
The victory for the #21 car was Vista AF Corse’s third in the last five races, having similarly prevailed in Japan and Bahrain at the end of 2024.
“Imola obviously wasn’t ideal, so this result feels really nice for the whole team, who worked so hard,” reflected Mann, who found himself collected by Valentino Rossi’s BMW in Italy, sending his Ferrari into the Rivazza gravel trap and out of contention. “It wasn’t an easy race, but I think we executed the tyre strategy quite well. It’s a great result after the disappointment of Imola.”
“We knew we had a good car, and the plan was to try to save some tyres at the beginning of the race to make Alessio’s life easier at the end,” added Heriau. “We double-stinted them, which wasn’t easy, and we got a drive-through penalty because when we were about to pit there was a Full Course Yellow, so we had to do an emergency stop, which was a few seconds too long.
“We never gave up, though, and we came back to fight at the front. The track was pretty hot and being in the dirty air a lot behind the Ford and the BMW was not so easy, but in the end everything turned out well. It was a good fight and I had a lot of fun.”
Rovera, meanwhile, had the task of climbing back up the order late on, but with fresher boots on his 296 LMGT3 than on many other cars, last year’s overall Goodyear Wingfoot Award winner was able to pick his rivals off one-by-one…
“I got into the car in P10 with four new tyres,” summarised the Ferrari factory driver. “I knew that was the time to push, to try to recover as many positions as possible. The car felt really good and I tried to go full attack while managing the tyres as well, because it was a double-stint.
“I received three track limit warnings, and in the second half of the double-stint, my job was to keep the car in-between the lines, which was quite difficult! Then for the last stint, I had four new tyres again and it was paradise...”
Rovera, Heriau and Mann’s success at Spa has vaulted them up to second in the LMGT3 title standings ahead of next month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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