Toyota set the quickest times in the morning session at Le Mans today.
Car number 8 with Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima was quickest ahead of number 7 and number 9. It was Nakajima who put in the quickest lap towards the end of the 4 hours drive.
Porsche was fourth and fifth fastest, but more than two seconds slower than the quickest Toyota.
But you shouldn’t think too much about the times, since it’s a test day, and we saw a lot of aborted laps – perhaps to hide their real speed. The picture was certainly a lot different, if you looked the theoretical laptimes. Toyota #8 would still be quickest, 0,6 seconds faster than they were timed at. Porsche has 1,2 seconds more in their cars.
Not surprisingly we saw the ByKolles Racing Team #4 way off the leading times – a bit less than 11 seconds of the fastest Toyota. ByKolles ENSO CLMP1/01 was around 4 kph faster than Toyota on the straights, and more than 9 kph faster than Porsche. Still their laptime was only good enough to be placed in the middle of the LMP2 field!
Photo: JJ Media
Signatech Alpine Matmut #35 was the fastest car in the LMP2 category, and the only LMP2 car below 3:30. That was followed by Vaillante Rebellion #13 followed by the ELMS team Graff #40. The laptimes in LMP2 were dominated by ORECA 07 – Gibson cars, where they had the 13 fastest times in the category. Then followed by Ligier and Dallara, while the Riley chassis at Keating Motorsports were slowest of all. It was Cetilar Villorba Corse #47 with a Dallara P217 – Gibson that set the ultimate fastest topspeed with 341,3 kph. Then followed by Racing Team Nederland #29 and SMP Racing #27, that used Dallara chassis too. 6 kph further back we had ORECA before Ligier was close to the ORECA speeds. Riley MK30 was way way off, and was 25 kph slower than the fastest Dallara!
Corvette Racing #63 was quickest in GTE Pro, 0,027 of a second ahead Porsche #91, with the other Corvette Racing #64 in third. The quickest Aston Martin Racing #97 was in fourth while the best Ferrari #71 was in sixth. Ford came in 7th but with a lot of time to find to the fastest. The real laptime and theoretical laptimes were so close to each other, so it appears that they drove to a laptime, and didn’t push the cars. Both Corvette, Aston Martin and Porsche had quite some time between their real and theoretical times. But we will have to wait an see in the coming sessions.
In GTE Am class, Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche #77 was the quickest ahead of DH Racing Ferrari #83 and Proton Competition #88. The times were so close, and top 8 were within a second, with Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Corvette represented. So it appears like this BOP has hit it bang on, where it more depends on the speed of the silver and bronze rated drivers.
The next session will start at 14.00 CET.
