For the first time in four and a half years, the FIA World Endurance Championship rolled out onto Circuit of the Americas for a competitive session.
At the end of Free Practice 1, Matt Campbell set the fastest lap thus far in the #5 Penske Porsche Motorsport 963.
Conditions were sunny and very warm for the first 90-minute session of the weekend, interrupted by a red flag for a stalled car, and then a Full Course Yellow to retrieve the stranded #60 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 of Claudio Schiavoni down at turn 19. Race Control would add five more minutes of track time to the session near the end.
Antonio Fuoco was the first driver to crack into the one-minute, 54-second range in his factory red #50 AF Corse Ferrari with a 1:54.118, but he would soon be surpassed by the yellow #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Kubica. Kubica set a 1:54.034, all within the first 30 minutes.
But it wouldn’t finish as a Ferrari 1-2, as Oliver Rasmussen turned in a 1:54.051 in the gold and black #38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche 963 – just 0.017s back of Kubica’s time.
Then, with less than two minutes left, Campbell set the fastest time at 1:53.574, putting the factory Porsche on top ahead of the yellow AF Corse customer Ferrari of Kubica. Rasmussen was third-fastest in the end, an encouraging start to the weekend for the #38 JOTA crew.
The two factory Ferrari AF Corse 499Ps finished fourth and fifth – the #50 of Antonio Fuoco ahead of the #51 of Antonio Giovinazzi.
Alex Lynn was sixth-fastest in the #2 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R, just edging out Hypercar World Championship co-leader Kevin Estre in the #6 Penske Porsche in seventh, with Rene Rast eighth in the #20 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8.
Dries Vanthoor in the #15 WRT BMW, and Nyck de Vries in the #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid completed the top ten in Hypercar.
Meanwhile in LMGT3, the #55 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 LMGT3 driven by Alessio Rovera was the fastest in this session (2:06.253). The #88 Proton Competition Ford Mustang of Dennis Olsen landed in second position, two-tenths of a second behind the class-leading car (2:06.475). The sister car, the #77 Ford Mustang driven by Ben Barker was third fastest (2:06.723).
Further down in the LMGTE ranks, the 60 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracán LMGT3 EVO2 had a difficult session as Claudio Schiavoni stopped on track at Turn 19 for an extended period because of technical issues.
Finally, the Championship leading car, the #92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Aliaksandr Malykhin, Joel Sturm and Klaus Bachler was the slowest in the session (2:08.421, set by Bachler) but covered a reasonable distance with 34 laps.
Free Practice 2 starts this afternoon at 5:10 CDT (local time).
Images © Andrew “Skippy” Hall / Dailysportscar.com
