The 2024 ELMS pre-season Prologue test at Barcelona is in the books, the fifth and final session this afternoon coming to a close with the #22 United Autosports ORECA 07 Gibson setting the fastest time.
Ben Hanley reeled off the car’s 1:28.493 lap of the 4.6 km Spanish circuit, putting him and his teammates almost four-tenths clear of the rest of the cars in the class. It wasn’t the best lap of the two-day test though, that went to Arthur Leclerc earlier in the day with his Morning Session-topping 1:28.254 in the Panis ORECA.
With the LMP2 cars back to full power, the times have been quicker than last year’s pole lap throughout, Leclerc’s time a second up on Reshad De Gerus’ 1:29.396. It will be interesting to see how fast the times get on Saturday when the cars head out to qualify with low fuel and fresh rubber…
Best of the rest was this afternoon the #37 COOL Racing ORECA, which brought the session to an end a minute early when Malthe Jakobsen stopped on track in the gravel bringing out late red flags.
In LMP2 Pro/Am the best time was set by Albert Costa Balboa in the #24 Nielsen Racing ORECA, a 1:30.431 to go 12th on the overall classification.
Over the two days of track time, the best time in the eight-car category was set by Laurents Hörr, a 1:28.960 this morning.
LMP3 was topped by a Duqueine chassis for the first time this week, the #12 from WTM by Rinaldi pacing the field with a 1:36.327 as part of a 52-lap run. Remarkably, the #17 COOL Racing Ligier finished with a near-identical time, Manuel Espirito Santo’s best just 0.001 off.
Elsewhere in the category, the #5 RLR M Sport Ligier was being repaired in its garage after stopping at Turn 5 towards the end of the session. The car suffered from braking issues and requires further attention ahead of the race weekend.
LMGT3 saw nine of the 10 cars take to the circuit, with the #57 Kessel Racing Ferrari topping the times with a 1:41.597 from Daniel Serra. Once again it was a Ferrari 1-2, with Spirit of Race’s #55 296 ending up second, its best time within two-tenths after a further 55 laps.
It was a Ferrari that set the best LMGT3 time of the Prologue too, with Davide Rigon’s 1:41.078 the benchmark time to aim for in Free Practice later this week. By comparison, Rigon’s time was within a second of the fastest GTE time set last year ahead of the race by Martin Rump in the #93 Proton Porsche.
The only car which didn’t take part, as expected, was the #97 Grid Motorsport by TF Aston Martin Vantage. Martin Berry’s heavy shunt in the Morning Session has left the team scrambling to find a solution to a ‘very broken car’ problem.
Track action continues at Barcelona tomorrow with the Michelin Le Mans Cup Prologue. The ELMS 4 Hours of Barcelona weekend proper gets underway on Friday.
