The astonishing year on year progress in LMP1 pace came to Texas this afternoon with the first Free Practice session of the weekend seeing last year’s fastest session 1 time bettered by more than 3.5 seconds. Mark Webber took the #17 Porsche around the 3.4 mile circuit in a pair of laps in the 1:47.5s, the first of them marginally the quicker of the pair: 1:47.514. Romain Dumas though, edged ahead with a 1:47.425 as the session moved in to the final 15 minutes then a 1:47.231 with 8 minutes remaining, this beating the fastest ever LMP1 lap here, a 1:47.3, by Benoit Treluyer during the race in 2013.
That time also blew away the (averaged out) pole position time from last year by around 1.8 seconds! It won’t though, of course, count as an official class lap record, yet!
Behind the charging Porsches came the #8 Audi a full 1.9 seconds back with the Toyota pair 4 and 5 seconds away from the fastest time respectively for the #1 and #2 TS040s.
The #7 Audi though was in trouble, just 4 laps completed before the car was garaged with an alternator problem. The car was altered with an alternate alternator but not in time to return to the track before the end of the session.
The fastest of the LMP1 Privateers was the #12 Rebellion 1:55.844 beating out a mid session effort from the ByKolles CLM with the second Rebellion in the midst of the LMP2s
It was a Tequila Patron ESM 1, 2 for much of the session in LMP2 before Matt Howson intervened to put the KCMG Oreca Nissan ahead, 1:57.764 beating Johannes van Overbeek’s 1:58.342, and Ryan Dalziel’s 1:58.353 in the #31 and #30 Ligier HPDs.
The #42 Strakka Gibson was one of a pair of cars that stopped on track during the session, Nick Leventis though made it back to the pit for the Gibson Nissan to rejoin the action.
The other car to stop on track was the #51 AF Corse Ferrari, Toni Vilander unable to restart the car after a seemingly similar issue to that which hobbled the car in Germany.
It would though still finish the session second fastest, though an improved effort from the sister #71 Ferrari, James Calado posting a 2:06.753 would still give a Ferrari 1,2 at the checkered flag.
Fred Mako popped up third fastest in the #92 Porsche before the quickest of the LM GTE Ams appeared in the order, this an early session effort from Pat Long in the #77 Dempsey Proton Porsche, a 2:07.487.
GG
