Toyota took the lead in Free Practice 2 of the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo, with the FIA World Endurance Championship protagonists able to lap the Interlagos circuit for 135 minutes, making up for the time lost in this morning’s session.
By the way: after the crash at Turn 4 that ended the race prematurely, Arnold Robin – pulled from the wreck of his Lexus in pain but conscious – was taken to hospital for routine checks, and was immediately discharged without further problems.
These instead went to the Akkodis-ASP team, which, not having a spare chassis for the RC F LMGT3 #78, will find itself forced to race with only the #87 in this event. The damage suffered in the accident that occurred to the Frenchman due to a failure of the braking system was too extensive, so for him and his teammates Kelvin Van Der Linde and Clemens Schmid the Brazilian adventure ends here.
Returning to the track results, where a couple of Full Course Yellows to remove debris froze the situation for a few minutes, most of the competitors took advantage of the long time available to try long-runs, giving all the drivers in the crew the chance to complete a good number of laps each.
From this point of view, the hardest-working cars in the HYPERCAR class were the Toyotas (83 and 77 laps), both in front with the #8 GR010 Hybrid achieving the best time of 1’25″727 thanks to Sébastien Buemi, who preceded his colleague in the #7 Kamui Kobayashi by just 0″033.
On the Japanese LMH, the returning Mike Conway completed 20 laps and now we will see if he feels up to taking part in Sunday’s race, still suffering from the injury that deprived him of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Next up are the two official Ferraris, with the 499P #51 that Alessandro Pier Guidi put in front of the #50 in which Antonio Fuoco had been the fastest in the final minutes. The Reds are very close to the Blacks, respectively 0″043 and 0″049 behind.
The Cadillac #2 also finishes in the Top 5 at 0″0142 from the top, leaving behind the Porsches of Jota #12 and #38, the best in the private team category, narrowly beating the Ferrari #83 of AF Corse which is eighth and 0″404 from the leader.
The #99 Proton Competition Porsche and the #20 BMW completed a top 10 separated by 0″966, with the #93 Peugeot and #35 Alpine narrowly missing out, followed by the official Team Penske Porsches.
The #63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini is 16th at 1.4, two places ahead of the Isotta Fraschini which is only 2″ off the lead.
In the LMGT3 class, the poor day of the Akkodis-ASP Team was mitigated by the leadership signed by José Maria Lopez with the #87 Lexus in 1’35″725, beating the #60 Lamborghini of Iron Lynx by 0″3 and the #55 Ferrari of AF Corse and the #82 Corvette of TF Sport by four tenths.
Fifth fastest time for the #27 Aston Martin of Heart of Racing, half a second behind ‘Pechito’, followed by the #95 McLaren of United Autosports, whose twin #59 is ninth.
In the middle are the #92 Porsche of Manthey PureRxcing and the #77 Ford Mustang of Proton Competition. Behind are the WRT BMWs: the #31 is 13th, the #46 16th, where Valentino Rossi finished with 27 laps under his belt and just 2 tenths behind team leader Maxime Martin.
Saturday sees Free Practice 3 at 3:30 PM Italian time, with Qualifying and the assault on the Hyperpole starting at 7:30 PM.
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