United Autosports’ #22 ORECA 07 Gibson started its second weekend in service perfectly, topping the opening European Le Mans Series Free Practice session of the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps.
Filipe Albuquerque, who won the four-hour ELMS race at Spa in 2018 with Phil Hanson, was the fastest man in the British-flagged team’s Michelin-shod 07 Gibson, setting a 2:01.317.
Cool Racing, still fresh from its first WEC class win at Silverstone, ended up second after Nicolas Lapierre set a 2:02.339.
This weekend Cool Racing has had to scale back to a two-driver crew, as Alex Coigny, who was injured in a shunt at Silverstone is not fit enough to return to the cockpit. This leaves Lapierre to pair up with Antonin Borga once again, as he did in the WEC race at Silverstone, the day after Coigny’s incident.
The fastest of the Dunlop runners completed the top three. Jean-Eric Vergne put G-Drive Racing’s newly built Aurus 01 third, the Frenchman managing a 2:02.661. Roman Rusinov and Job van Uitert, who had a huge off in private testing on Wednesday – also turned laps in the session.
The #32 United Autosports ORECA, making its debut this weekend, ended up fourth, ahead of the #23 Panis Barthez ORECA in fifth. The fastest of the three Ligier JS P217s was the #34 Inter Europol example which ended up 12th.
In LMP3, the #9 Realteam Racing Norma turned the fastest lap of the 14 cars in the class. David Droux was the quickest driver, setting a 2:13.342, two tenths up on Mikkel Jensen and Jens Petersen’s #11 Eurointernational Ligier. The #10 Oregon Team Norma completed the top three.
LMP3 points leaders Nigel Moore and Martin Hippe meanwhile, were 10th fastest in the LMP3 category driving the #13 Inter Europol JS P3, with a 2:15.928 lap time.
10 minutes into the session, the red flags came out due to the #5 360 Racing Ligier suffering a fire at Le Combes.
“There was no problem with power. There was smoke. I saw the smoke, stopped the car and it went up in flames at the rear,” driver James Winslow told DSC.
In GTE, the #77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche was the fastest of the six cars in the class, which doesn’t feature the #88 Proton Porsche of #56 Project 1 Porsche on the entry. Matteo Cairoli set the German team’s best lap, a 2:16.991 lap, 0.236s ahead of the #60 Kessel Racing Ferrari of Andrea Piccini.
The second Free Practice session will take place tomorrow morning at 09:05 am, just ahead of qualifying for the 4 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, which begins at 12:18 local time.
