Tonight’s night practice session confirmed today’s domination of Toyota. Sebastien Buemi topped the time sheets in the #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid with a lap time of 3.29.351. The #7 Toyota shared by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez finished in second position, a little less than four tenths of a second behind the sister car (3.29.738). The #708 Glickenhaus Racing 007 LMH driven by Pipo Derani, Franck Mailleux and Oliver Pla ended in third position (3.30.112), some seven tenths behind the leading Toyota while the #36 Alpine Elf Matmut A480 finished fourth.
Meanwhile in LMP2, Anthony Davidson dominated the session pretty much from start to finish in the #38 Jota Oreca 07 Gibson (3.32.390). The #70 Realteam Racing Oreca shared by Loic Duval, Esteban Garcia and Norman Nato finished 2 tenths behind (3.32.608) and four tenths ahead of the #22 United Autosport driven by Phil Hanson, Fabio Scherer and Filipe Albuquerque (3.33.076)
Further down in the ranks:
The session started without the #48 IDEC Sport Oreca 07 Gibson. The car was being repaired after Paul Loup Chatin’s accident in the earlier qualifying session. “We had everything to take hyperpole” said the frenchman. “I just put my left tyre some two are three inches into the grass and I lost the car”. The repair of the #48 ended with less then 30 minutes left in the session. The car was able to cover a few laps and conclude the session in 18th position overall / 13th position in its class.
The #24 PR1 Motorsport Mathiasen driven by Patrick Kelly ran out of fuel and stopped on track before Porsche Curves. That car was brought back to the pits on a flat bed and was refuelled to rejoin the session
The #21 Dragonspeed USA driven by Ben Hanley went off at Indianapolis in the final moments of the session. The car showed very few apparent stigma from this accident.
GTE-Pro
After the attacking pace of qualifying, this evening’s second Free Practice session was less frenetic in its return to what could start to indicate race pace.
It was some 20 minutes before James Calado established GTE-Pro machinery ahead of the Am front runners, the #51 AF Corse Ferrari the first lap in the 3:51’s before the Porsches of Neel Jani and Fred Makowiecki established themselves 1-2 in the mid 3:50’s.
Sam Bird demonstrated the #52 Ferrari remains a match to its sister car, dipping into the low 3:51’s. Daniel Serra elevated the car’s lap times into second, just six hundredths shy of the #91 Porsche, before a shredded front right tyre halted progress, and indeed that of the whole field as the Ferrari parked just beyond Arnage, its precarious position and debris bringing out the red flag with an hour of the session remaining. The Ferrari was recovered to the AF Corse garage with significant frontal damage.
Into the last 15 minutes and times were dropping nicely into the 3:49’s. Weathertec Racing showed its hand as the best of these, Laurens Vanthoor’s impressive 3:49.018 nearly a second clear of Richard Lietz in the #91 Porsche and the #52 AF Corse Ferrari.
The situation at Corvette Racing promotes conjecture. Nick Tandy’s flash of pace in qualifying wasn’t reflective of the performance of the C8.R here as a whole. The #64 car was now posting laps that left it trailing the Pro class, in the bottom third of the overall field, suggesting installation here for an otherwise established car was more of a priority for the team.
GTE-Am
With night laps a priority for many drivers, GTE-Am assumed a more settled rhythm as set-up and familiarity became the priority. Amid some criticism from prototype drivers regarding lack of awareness of the GTE field in traffic, the compression of seat time in FP1 ahead of an early qualifying session might be a consideration…
For the first hour of this 2-hour session, Team Project 1’s #56 Porsche topped seven cars in the 3:52’s, before Julien Andlauer continued his solid pace behind the wheel of the #88 Dempsey Proton 911 RSR-19 to post a class leading 3:51.452 that held to the finish.
A stellar late charge from Jeroen Bleekemolen put the #388 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari 488 GTE Evo second, a 3:51.959 bumping the #56 Porsche to third.
The session was red-flagged three minutes from the allotted end of the session and did not resume after the #46 Team Project 1 Porsche of Robby Foley crashed at Tertre Rouge, the driver apparently OK, the car significantly less so!
