Toyota and Lexus take first places at the end of the morning test session of the 24h of Le Mans, with the protagonists of the FIA World Endurance Championship and colleagues invited by ACO who benefited from 180′ to start working in view of next week’s race .
Brief interruption of 14′ just over half an hour after the start of the work, with the #3 Cadillac driven by Renger Van Der Zande which first broke down along the straight of ‘Les Hunaudières’, and then stopped at ‘ Mulsanne’.
Some small problems also for the Lexus #87 of the Akkodis-ASP Team, which stopped along the track for a systems reset before setting off again. The occasion was propitious to try the Full Course Yellow regime.
Towards the end, another yellow flag near the Dunlop bridge, when Dries Vanthoor had to momentarily stop his #15 BMW.
Halfway through the session, the Race Direction also took the opportunity to carry out a Safety Car test, which this year will have a slightly different procedure compared to the last edition, when there was a real revolution.
In 2024 the ‘Drop Back’ was eliminated, i.e. the division into Classes before the restart, which will take place with the entire group in single file behind a single safety car and after the splitting phases for those have been completed who are ahead of the category leader.
Finally, the checkered flag was shown slightly early due to an accident involving Lorenzo Fluxa, who went off the track at the end with the Oreca #37 of Cool Racing, but escaped unharmed.
#63 Lamborghini Iron Lynx Lamborghini SC63 of Mirko Bortolotti, Daniil Kvyat, Edoardo Mortara
Photo credit: Rainier Ehrhardt
Coming to the time table, obviously to be taken with the benefit of inventory given that we are only in the first session and the track is constantly evolving and tyred, in the HYPERCAR Class it is the usual Kamui Kobayashi who sets the reference time in 3’28″467 with the Toyota #7 trailing the Porsche #6 of Team Penske by 0″8 and the BMW #20 of WRT in ‘Art Car’ livery by almost 1″.
All the other cars are quite close to each other, with the Lamborghini #63 and the Ferrari #83 of AF Corse obtaining the Top5, putting the other two official Porsches #5 and #4 behind them.
The Peugeot closes the morning with the #93 ninth, while the official Ferrari 499Ps #51 and #50 are in 10th and 11th place at 3’30″5, ahead of the pair of Porsches from Jota competing for the classification of private individuals.
The best of the Cadillacs is the #2 of Chip Ganassi Racing, currently 14th in 3’32″2, the Alpines are further back occupying the 18th and 19th place, with the Isotta Fraschini capable of putting together 26 laps alternating its three competitors.
#28 Idec Sport Oreca 07 – Gibson of Paul Lafargue, Job Van Uitert, Reshad De Gerus
Photo by: Marc Fleury
In the LMP2 Class, the reference is placed by the Oreca #28 of Idec Sport with Job Van Uitert on top in 3’37″044, giving 3 tenths of a second to the #14 of AO by TF with the wonderful ‘Spike’ livery, which is also the best of the PRO/AM subcategory. A little further away from this is the #34 of Inter Europol Competition, which is followed by Panis Racing #65 and Vector Sport #10.
Sixth time, more than 1″5 from the top for the APR #25 with the two 07-Gibsons of United Autosport behind, whose #23 precedes the #22 and is second in PRO/AM.
Third of this lot is the APR #45 which finishes ninth, completing the Top10 is the #183 of AF Corse, fourth PRO/AM.
#20 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Sheldon Van Der Linde, Robin Frijns, Rene Rast
Photo credit: Rainier Ehrhardt
Among the LMGT3s, Kelvin Van Der Linde set a time of 4’00″106 which allowed the Lexus #78 of Akkodis-ASP to stand out with a nice margin of 0″8 ahead of the BMW #31 of Team WRT, chased by the United Autosports McLaren #59 and Inception Racing #70.
Top5 for the #46 WRT BMW driven by Maxime Martin, who only needed three laps to be the fastest of the trio, despite finding himself 1″ behind the leader. Valentino Rossi completed 10 laps lapping 1″ behind his Belgian colleague.
The Aston Martin #27 of Heart of Racing is sixth, behind which we find the Lamborghini #85 of the Iron Dames and the Ferrari of AF Corse #54, while in the Top10 with larger delays we also have the Fords #88 and #44 of Proton Competition.
The Porsches of Manthey PureRxcing and Manthey Ema finish the tests in 18th and 19th place, with the best of the TF Sport Corvettes eleventh.
The afternoon session is scheduled from 3.30pm to 6.30pm.
FIA WEC – 24h of Le Mans: Test Day, Session 1
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