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.
Source: Autosport