Olli Caldwell set the fastest time in the opening Free Practice session of the 2024/2025 Asian Le Mans Series season at Sepang today, which was held in blistering temperatures.
The British racer’s 1:52.199 aboard the #20 Algarve Pro Racing Oreca 07 Gibson was well over a second clear of the second fastest time, set by the #11 Proton Competition car with Mathias Beche at the wheel.
LMP2 debutant (and protege of Giancarlo Fisichella and Marco Cioci), Valerio Rinicella, was a further tenth off his team-mate’s best.
LMP2 debuting team (and driver) Harry King was in the mix fourth fastest in Pure Rxcing’s #91 Oreca ahead of the reigning ELMS LMP2 Pro-Am Champions, AF Corse with the #83 car, Alessio Rovera the quickest of their trio in the session.
The remainder of the top 10 was made up of the debuting RD Limited #30, Proton Competition’s 11, Nielsen Racing’s #24, the #50 AF Corse car and the #3 DKR Engineering entry.
The fastest bronze driver in the session was Francois Perrodo, a 1:55.561half a tenth clear of the best of Pure Racing’a Alex Malykhin with fellow class debutant Jeremy Clarke a couple of tenths back in the #50 AF Corse car.
The session saw a brief red flag and a trio of Full Course yellows for a number of cars off course but with no major damage to cars, drivers to circuit infrastructure.
LMP3 was headed by the AF Corse-prepped #35 Ultimate Ligier in the hands of Matteo Quintarelli with a lap in 2:00.663.
That was significantly faster than James Winslow, topping a trio of times in the 2:02s in the #7 Graff Ligier, a 2:02.132 ahead of Anders Fjordbach in the #49 High Class Racing car and Ian Aguilera in the #15 RLR MSport Ligier.
The top Bronze time came from ELMS LMP3 Champion Nick Adcock, fifth quickest driver in the session, again in the #15.
Chris van der Drift in the #23 Absolute Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 ran fastest in GT with a lap in 2:04.672. That topped a Ferrari 1-2-3 ahead of Riccardo Agostini’s #51 AF Corse 296 and the #74 Kessel car of Dustin Blattner, who was also the fastest Bronze driver of the session.
Both Car Collection Porsche 911 GT3Rs followed on with the #82 AF Corse and #57 Car Guy Ferraris, #81 Winward AMG, #10 Manthey Porsche and #2 Climax AMG rounding out the top 10.
