#8 Toyota Tops Incident-Packed Opening Le Mans Practice
Free Practice 1 for the centenary running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans got underway on a warm, sunny Wednesday afternoon at Circuit de la Sarthe.
The three-hour session saw Toyota Gazoo Racing’s #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid set the fastest time and head up a 1-2 finish – but it was also heavily disrupted after a heavy crash exiting the Forest Esses at the halfway mark.
The #777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GTE of Casper Stevenson lost control at the exit of the esses and hit head-on into the armco barriers. Several drivers were able to dodge Stevenson’s car, that had come to a stop past a crest on the run up to Tertre Rouge.
But Steven Thomas reacted too late, he appeared on camera already with his brakes and wheels locked up in a double-waved yellow flag zone. His #13 Tower Motorsports Oreca 07-Gibson veered to the left and punched the driver-side door of the dark green Aston Martin. This brought out an immediate red flag.
Despite the terrifying-looking impact, Stevenson was able to climb from his car uninjured, and after his car came to a stop at Tertre Rouge, Thomas was able to get out of his damaged #13 Oreca.
Attention then turned to repairing and replacing the portion of damaged guardrail. The work of the marshalls and safety crews ensured that practice could get back up and running in 35 minutes.
The #13 Tower Motorsports Oreca’s damage was mostly confined to the nose, but a new chassis is required. It’s a similar story for D’station Racing, its Aston Martin chassis is a total loss, leaving their partners at TF Sport needing to rush for a solution to keep this team in the race.
Until that point, things had generally gone well for most of the Hypercar and LMP2 class runners and riders. It took less than ten minutes for Test Day’s best times to be surpassed – Jose Maria Lopez took the Toyota #7 to the top with a best lap of 3:28.290.
After the red flag, Kamui Kobayashi would set the benchmark higher – the TGR driver/team principal put in a 3:27.875 with 45 minutes to go.
But then in the last 25 minutes, Brendon Hartley offered a response from across the garage – and the Kiwi took the #8 Toyota to the top with a 3:27.742.
That’s where the benchmark would stand after the chequered flag, brought on early after an incident for an LMGTE car at Tertre Rouge. Toyota Gazoo Racing, despite its concerns about how the latest Hypercar BoP adjustment would affect them, finished first and second on the time sheets and ran a trouble-free session.
The LMDh-spec Cadillac V-Series.Rs are starting to show more of their one-lap potential. Two-time Le Mans winner Earl Bamber set a fast time of 3’27.939 in the last ten minutes, good enough for third-fastest out of 16 Hypercar entries.
Porsche Penske Motorsport also had one of its fleet of Porsche 963s show out in the last 30 minutes, as Felipe Nasr went fourth-fastest in the #75 Porsche setting a 3’28.150, followed by WEC full-timer Kevin Estre aboard the #6 Porsche in fifth.
The good news for Peugeot supporters is that the one-lap pace is there from each of the two 9X8s – Loic Duval went sixth-fastest in the #94, and Mikkel Jensen went seventh-fastest in the #93, at 3’28.386 and 3’28.533 respectively. That would be good enough to get both of the French-built cars into Thursday’s Hyperpole session.
The bad news is that the #93 lost about 45 minutes of track time when the car came to a sudden stop at the exit of pit lane, and not long after, the #94 was reported to have gone off track, necessitating over 80 minutes in the garage (including the red flag time).
After Ferrari-AF Corse led both sessions on Test Day, it was a surprise to see Antonio Fuoco only manage eighth-fastest in the #50 Ferrari 499P – with the #51 Ferrari only 12th, and one position behind the fastest privateer, the #709 Glickenhaus Racing 007, whose fastest time was set by Esteban Gutierrez.
The same fortune didn’t fall the way of the Floyd Vanwall Racing Team. The #4 Vanwall Vandervell 680 spent much of the final hour in the garage after a heavy kerb strike forced it back to the garage for repairs. While the top 15 cars in Hypercar were covered by 2.5 seconds, the Vanwall was 7.1 seconds adrift and last in class.
In LMP2, fast times were established early on before teams moved on to race simulations. Third-generation star Pietro Fittipaldi set the high mark for JOTA, taking the gold #28 Oreca to the top with a lap time of 3’34.579.
But new Peugeot junior driver Malthe Jakobsen wasn’t far behind, only 0.032 seconds adrift in the #37 COOL Racing Oreca – which was the fastest LMP2 Pro-Am car. These top times would not be beaten before the final red flag.
The gap to third place was a bit bigger, 1.8 seconds separated Jakobsen from the third-ranked #63 Prema Racing Oreca of Mirko Bortolotti – who himself was just 20 milliseconds faster than the best time from Matthieu Vaxiviere in the #36 Alpine Elf Team Oreca.
Albert Costa went fifth-fastest in the #34 Inter Europol Competition Oreca, which was good – but it wasn’t so good when the green and yellow prototype stopped just past the pit exit line. After a reset, Inter Europol’s ace car was back on its way.
Robin Frijns owned up to a mistake when he slid off into the grass in his #31 Team WRT Oreca in the opening minutes but he also showed some pace with the sixth-fastest time. Two more LMP2 Pro-Am cars occupied the rest of the top eight – the #14 Nielsen Racing Oreca and the #923 Racing Team Turkey Oreca, piloted by Ben Hanley and Dries Vanthoor respectively.
Of note from the LMP2 Pro-Am field, Nielsen Racing’s Rodrigo Sales was the fastest of the Bronze-ranked drivers, setting a 3:43.451.
In GTE Am, All LMGTE-Am cars saw track action, with GMB Motorsport setting the pace with its Aston martin, with a 3:55.020 from Marco Sorensen.
The early pace set by Louis Prette’s JMW Ferrari 488 GTE before the car had a hefty off into the Ford Chicane. Front-end barrier contact for the #66 car caused the first slow zone of the session, four and a half minutes in. “I had a really big snap as I went into the chicane. The car felt fine; the marshals said there was some fluid down. There’s some front-end damage and I hope it’s just superficial,” reported the Italian driver.
As fluid leaked from the front of his Ferrari, Prette’s early efforts kept the JMW car amongst the better GTE-Am laps, before Alex Riberas for Northwest AMR and then Riccardo Pera for GR Racing’s Porsche topped the times.
As the action resumed after D’Station Racing’s Aston Martin Vantage AMR caused the session’s second interruption, GMB Motorsport found pace, Marco Sorensen improving the times for the all-Danish crew – his 3:55.020 the fastest lap of the session overall for the Aston Martin Vantage. Two-tenths off was the GR Racing Porsche: Riccardo Pera turning in a 3:55.330. The #16 Proton Competition Porsche 911-RSR made up the top three times, Jan Heylen setting a 3:55.573 having had a low-key start.
Walkenhorst Motorsport’s Ferrari lost it under braking into the Dunlop chicane, the car rotating to collect a polystyrene banner which may have cushioned its rear tyre wall impact. Chandler Hull gathered the #100 entry and limped on, tyre smoke from the right rear.
This was just as Nicolas Varrone had taken over from Nicky Catsburg in the #33 Corvette late in the session. The young Argentinian in his second Le Mans took a lot of kerb, over-rotating into Tertre Rouge and parking the C8.R backwards into the tyre wall, bringing out the red flag inside the final minutes.
The best Ferrari was seventh: the #83 Richard Mille AF Corse posting 3:55.806 in the hands of Alessio Rovera.
The Garage 56 NASCAR found real pace in FP1. Jimmie Johnson’s opening seat time briefly put Hendrick Motorsports amongst the back of the LMP2s before the prototypes settled in, dropping the Chevrolet by ten seconds. Looking purposeful and solid though, Jenson Button’s 3:49.475 edged the #24 Camaro ZR1 to a lonely position eight seconds off the prototypes and six seconds ahead of the fastest LMGTE lap.
Next up on the schedule is Qualifying at 19:00 local time.
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