There was plenty of track action and some breakthrough performances to note in a busy Bahrain FIA WEC Rookie test on Sunday with five hours of running available.
As usual, there were additions to the entry for a test that, alongside the opportunities offered to some WEC-nominated ‘Rookies’, has often seen teams taking a close look at potential signings for the coming season, even before some of the dust has settled on the 2022 season.
Four additional drivers were added to the provisional list:
Kiwi Marcus Armstrong and Britain’s Olli Caldwell were both added to the #1 Richard Mille Racing Team Oreca 07 Gibson run plan, both 2022 Formula 2 racers, Armstrong was to get his first run in an LMP2 whilst Caldwell, a member of the Alpine F1 Academy, who tested an Alpine A521 F1 car at the Bahrain Circuit on Monday, returns to an Oreca cockpit after contesting the WEC season finale on the same circuit with ARC Bratislava last year.
Bent Viscaal meanwhile was named aboard the #9 Prema Oreca alongside Juan Manuel Correa.
Finn Gehrsitz, one of the WEC nominees, who would sample the #777 D’Station Aston Martin from GTE Am, was also set to add laps in the #44 ARC Bratislava Oreca, but the car was withdrawn from the test following damage in Saturday’s race. Francois Heriau was added to the list aboard the #21 AF Corse Ferrari, the French Bronze-ranked racer taking the opportunity to sample the GTE car ahead of a search for a possible Le Mans next season alongside his confirmed IMSA campaign with TDS Racing in LMP2.
The Championship results also decided the cars that would welcome Lilou Wadoux, who would sample the #8 Toyota (as well as the #21 GTE AM Ferrari), and Lorenzo Colombo named in yesterday’s race-winning Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.
Of the newcomers in the test 2022 European Le Mans Series LMP3 Champion Malthe Jakobsen topped the times, the young Dane one of three drivers invited by Peugeot to sample their 9X8 Hypercar.
Jakobsen put in a 1:50.222 in the #94 Peugeot 9X8 as part of a 55 lap allocation across four spells in the car, the team pronouncing themselves very happy with their driver choices for the test and seemingly particularly impressed with the young Dane who posted quick times in both sessions getting within 0.8 of a second of Nico Muller’s time in the same car.
Maximillian Guenther and double FIA WTCR champion Yann Ehrlacher both also lapped in the 393 and #94 Peugeot’s respectively but were both over a second slower than Jakobsen after a preparatory programme that included a day on the Peugeot Sim for all three drivers, Erlacher already familiar with the sim as a regular sim test driver for the outfit.
Quicker than both of the three Peugeot invitees was Lilou Wadoux whose WEC nomination as a ‘Rookie’ saw the young Frenchwoman become the first woman to get seat time in a HyperCar.
Wadoux’s 33 laps in the morning session in the Championship-winning #8 Toyota GR010 saw her post an impressive best time of 1:50.953 with Jose Maria Lopez setting the bar in the sister #7 with a 1:48.812, the fastest lap of the day.
Final confirmation too came from Peugeot that they will rely on their winter test programme to iron out the bugs in the 9X8s that have seen all three races in 2023 for the cars interrupted with a variety of reliability issues. There is no notion whatsoever that an attempt to add racing mileage at the Rolex 24 could be added to the programme.
LMP2
LMP2 saw Nelson Piquet Jr top the times in the #22 United Autosports Oreca, a 1:51.922 in the team’s regular 2022 ELMS car brought in for the test and shared with the Brazilian’s 2023 ELMS team-mates Andy Meyrick and Daniel Schneider.
The run was Piquet’s first in an LMP2 since his 2017 WEC campaign with the Valiante Rebellion effort.
Aussie Garnet Patterson had his first run in a Gibson-powered LMP2, though he has class experience in a previous generation car from the Asian Le Mans Series, and was fastest of the drivers new to the cars with a 1:53.036 in the other #23 United Autosports Oreca shared with Yasser Shahin who posted a best time just a second off his Aussie counterpart.
Olli Caldwell (#1 Richard Mille Racing, Frederick Lubin (#10 Vector Sport), Doriane Pin (#38 Jota – WEC ‘rookie’ nominee) and Marcus Armstrong #1 Richard Mille) finished the day line astern on the timing sheets within a quarter of a second of Patterson.
Antonio Fuoco was second fastest in the session in the #83 AF Corse Oreca he shared with Timur Boguslavskiy.
At Algarve Pro Racing, 2022 ELMS driver Filip Ugran was fastest of a four driver line-up ahead of 2022 Petit Le Mans GTD winner (with Gradient Racing) Kyffin Simpson (pictured above), the ex HPD Academy graduate looks set to combine a 2023 Indy NXT campaign with a run at the European Le Mans Series.
GTE Pro
GTE-Pro had its very final official testing session with two cars on track, the #52 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE fielded for the WEC-nominee ‘rookie’ Lorenzo Colombo who topped the class times with a 1:58.621, just a single thousandth of a second ahead of silver-rated Axcil Jefferies in the #64 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R.
Silver ranked ELMS race winner Nico Varrone and confirm 2023 Bronze driver for the team Ben Keating also ran, Keating with his first time in the car he will contest the 2023 FIA WEC aboard alongside Nicky Catsburg and a yet to be confirmed Silver-ranked driver.
Confirmed to DSC over the weekend in Bahrain is the fact that the car will retain a principally yellow livery in its GTE Am campaign.
Nick Tandy meanwhile had his very last run in a factory Corvette to set a target time for the day’s running. His time at the team has been popular with the always enthusiastic Corvette Racing and they signalled the end of his stint with a decorated pit board, a move that very sadly attracted the attention of Race Control, the team summoned for a post session chat!
GTE Am
Four cars welcomed a total of 11 different drivers over the day with the Bahrain race-winning #46 Team Project 1 Porsche posting the top two times in the session, full-season driver Mikkel Pedersen’s 1:59.865 bettering the best effort of Maxime Oosten by 8 tenths of a second.
Francois Heriau was next fastest in the #21 AF Corse Ferrari shared with Lilou Wadoux whilst the #98 Northwest AMR and #777 D’Station Racing Aston martins both ran too, the latter seeing Ryan Hardwick sampling the Aston Martin after a test with Proton with a Porsche at Portimao.
A statement from Porsche saying that the IMSA automatic LM24 invitee would be contesting the centenary race in a Porsche was described by Hardwick to DSC as “Somewhat premature!” though plans to also test a Ferrari look unlikely to come to pass at this stage.
TF Sport’s Tom Ferrier expressed some minor irritation at an inability to run the test of anything other than hard compound eyes due to supply difficulties with Michelin.
MORNING TIMES OVERAL >> | MORNING TIMES BY DRIVER >> | AFTERNOON TIMES OVERAL >> | AFTERNOON TIMES BY DRIVER >>
