Heavy early morning rain relented in time for the first 90 minute free practice session, the track though was still damp, and wouldn’t fully dry before the end of the session.
There were mid session dramas of the off track kind for G-Drive’s Ligier Nissan, the #26 gouging deep grooves through the wet infield as it rejoined, and of the rather fiery kind for the #88 Proton Porsche on pit lane, Wolf Henzler (aboard this weekend instead of the absent Klaus Bachler – On Supercup duty at COTA). the Porsche though as back out on track after a delay in the garage for a clean up.
Toyota led a 1,2 overall, the #8 TS040 the only car under 1:50 (1:49.833 – Buemi) Both Audis were in the 1:52s, ahead of the Porsches, The #14 only putting in 7 laps in the session and just edging out the #12 Rebellion for 6th fastest.
The rebuilt Lotus/ CLM has only 2 drivers, we believe James Rossiter will not drive the car again, Lucas Auer and Pierre Kaffer are the only two men named in the car here. The session saw the #9 car outside 2 minutes and behind all of the LMP2 field.
That field was led by the #26 G-Drive Ligier Nissan, 1:57.147 posted by Roman Rusinov to edge out the best effort of Alex Imperatori by a second. The full season pair though were split by the #30 ESM HPD, Ryan Dalziel getting up to speed early.
GTE again saw several of the Am cars running in the top tiers overall, the #98 Aston Martin of Pedro Lamy posting a 2:06.056, a tenth faster than the #51 AF Corse Ferrari.
