After Aston Martin set the pace in the opening practice session of the Bahrain weekend, it was BMW Team WRT which emerged as the fastest team in FP2 when the temperature began to drop and the floodlights were switched on this evening.
The #20 M Hybrid V8 was the quicker of the two LMDh prototypes from the German brand. Sheldon van der Linde set the Shell-branded car’s best time, a 1:48.790, to go significantly quicker than the #009 Valkyrie earlier in the day. In fact, the top nine cars all set times faster than Marco Sorensen’s hot lap from this morning.
Van der Linde was the only driver to eclipse the 1:49 mark, though, putting BMW in good shape ahead of the final practice session and qualifying tomorrow.
Despite the improvements made up and down the timing screens by the Hypercar field, the #009 Aston showed speed again, ending up second after a highly productive day for the THOR Team.
“It’s been really positive. Decent results, but we’re not too worried about that at the moment. We just want to do decent stints in the race. The car is decent over one lap, but we need to work more on race pace,” Sorensen said after the day’s action.
The #93 Peugeot ended up third in the running order, which featured six different manufacturers in the top six after laps from the #7 Toyota, #5 Porsche and #51 Ferrari to claim spots at the sharp end.
As for dramas, the #99 Proton Porsche was the only car in the top class that failed to make it out for a lap due to an “issue with the loom that took a long time to diagnose”, and the #15 BMW ended the night under investigation for a collision at Turn 12 with the #92 Porsche involving Raffaele Marciello and Ryan Hardwick.
The variety on the leaderboard was similar in LMGT3, with the top eight positions occupied by eight different manufacturers after the second 90-minute session.
The #78 Lexus claimed P1 with a 2:02.613 from Finn Gehrsitz. It wasn’t all positive at AKKODIS ASP, though, as the #87 sister car didn’t set a lap.
Iron Dames’ Porsche, the #33 TF Sport Corvette, Heart of Racing’s Aston Martin, and the #60 Iron Lynx Mercedes sat second through fifth when the chequered flag emerged.
Track action continues tomorrow with Free Practice 3, which can be streamed for free live on YouTube at 12:00 local time.
