The first 90 minutes of Free Practice at Bahrain International Circuit ahead of Saturdays 6 Hours of Bahrain was topped by a Toyota one-two, Sebastien Buemi and Jose Maria Lopez in the #8 and #7 GR010 Hybrids respectively the only drivers under the 1:51 mark on a baking hot afternoon.
Buemi’s best was a 1:50.571, four-tenths up on the sister car with Nicolas Lapierre third fastest in Hypercar in the #36 Alpine A480, just a tenth off Lopez.
The Alpine though was not third fastest overall, Lapierre’s best pipped by Antonio Felix da Costa in the #38 Jota ORECA 07, a 1:51.083 half a second off the best Toyota time, and 15 thousandths up on the Alpine.
The second fastest in LMP2 was the fastest of the Pro-Am cars, the #70 RealTeam Racing car, albeit in the very Pro hands of Löic Duval, 0.129 off da Costa and a tenth off the Alpine.
Sean Geleal, Giedo van der Garde and Filipe Albuquerque would complete the LMP2 top five in, respectively, the second (#28) Jota, #29 Racing Team Nederland and #22 United Autosports Orecas.
GTE saw, as has become traditional this season, a GTE Am fox in the Pro hen house, together with some oddness in the Ferrari ranks.
Richard Lietz topped the times in the #91 Pro car (1:57.983) with Matteo Cairoli once again slapping down his business card with gusto, second fastest in the GTE combined order with a 1:58.177 from the #56 Team Project 1 GTE AM Porsche.
They were the top two in a Porsche 1,2,3,4,5 with the #92 Pro car followed by the #88 and #77 Dempsey Proton GTE Am cars and then the two Am Aston Martins before the first Ferrari in the order. That though wasn’t a Pro car, indeed three Am class 488 GTEs topped the time of the fastest of the two Pro cars, this after Ferrari made it very clear that they were unhappy with the BoP doled out to their cars here, the event press release from Maranello talking of being forced “to adopt a defensive strategy following the announcement of new Balance of Performance parameters that overrules the automatic BoP.”
It seems unlikely though that the FP1 pace of the Pro cars in particular is representative of their full potential with several of the Am Ferraris, which have been doled out a less favourable BoP than the Pro 488s outpacing the Pro cars today. We’ll see!
Pics by Peter ‘Pedro’ May
