ELMS, 6 Hours Of Le Castellet - First Practice Session Report

Orecas Dominate, Zyteks Improving

The weekend’s first practice session kicked off at 09:15 beneath clear skies and bright sunshine; the conditions excellent, although the track itself was reported as very “green”.

Within the first fifteen minutes just over half the total field had taken to the track, with Mathias Beche topping the screen in the TDS Oreca 03 (#46), posting a 1:49.810, narrowly ahead of Jonathan Hirschi in the Judd-powered Race Performance Oreca. Warren Hughes, getting to grips with the Murphy Prototypes Oreca 03, wrapped up the top three with a 1:50.356.

Quickest of the GT cars with that quarter hour completed was Stuart Hall in the #69 Gulf Racing Vantage, ahead of Nicolas Armindo in the IMSA Performance 997 #67. These two were ahead of the only one of the GTE Pro cars at that time to have taken to the track; Jaime Melo in the JMB Ferrari 458. Just one of the two LMPC entrants set an early time, although 2:03.700 was fairly unrepresentative from Dagoneau.

We had to wait until 09:40 before we’d have seen all 21 cars with a time allocated, the Curtis Racing Technologies LMPC the last to join in, with newcomer Alex Kapadia making a tentative start to his campaign.

The first significant change came with half an hour gone, when Pierre Kaffer swept through to the top of the screens with a 1:49.606 for Pecom Racing to make it a clean sweep of top-five places for the Oreca 03; Nicolas Minassian holding fifth for Sebastien Loeb Racing. Just half a second separated the top six

Cars #1 and #69, the Greaves Zytek and Gulf Racing Vantage, were reported to have had a coming-together shortly afterwards, although details were sparse. The team manager of the #1 Zytek was summoned to the stewards for a chat, and evidently soon made it clear that the Greaves car was not responsible for the incident. An “apology” was issued and the manager of the #38 Zytek, the all-white Jota example, was hauled over the coals instead.

Despite an out-lap, Kapadia was still to complete a full timed lap, leaving the Curtis LMPC the only car still to set a time.

The situation in GTE continued to show the ‘Am’ cars heading the ‘Pros’, although Peter Philipp had moved the Kessel Racing Ferrari 458 through to third, 15th overall, two-minutes dead.

Ten o’clock saw half the session completed and Warren Hughes flying to the top of the charts with a much improved 1:48.650, almost a full second clear of Pecom’s Oreca (where Bruni had taken over from Kaffer). The Status GP Lola had also improved with Alexander Sims clocking a 1:50.071 to move through to fourth, splitting the top five Orecas.

At four minutes past the hour we encountered our first red flag period of the weekend, with the #45 Boutsen Ginion Racing Oreca (Jack Clarke in the cockpit) off the track and engulfed in flames. The marshals were quickly on the scene, swathing the car in extinguisher foam, and Jack was swiftly out of the car – evidently more concerned by the state of the Oreca than his own safety, encouraging the marshals to increase their efforts to smother the flames. It was a significant fire and the car appeared to have sustained some serious damage, with the whole of the left rear in a bad way.

The session was suspended until 10:20, with Stéphane Sarrazin the first to rejoin the track, followed by all but one of the remaining 20 cars.

The Status Lola and Greaves Zytek aside, the “best of the rest” after the quintet of Orecas was the Oak Racing Morgan Judd, 8th with a best of 1:50.569, two-tenths quicker than the hors de combat #45. Rounding out the P2 top 11 were the Extreme Limite Norma, roughly five seconds off the pace, but a tad quicker than the Jota Zytek.

That situation changed with ten minutes remaining, when Simon Dolan in the Jota Zytek, #38, upped his pace with a two-second improvement and a move into 10th.

The Greaves Zytek had been playing a softly-softly approach through the earlier part of the session, but moved steadily up through the order to slot neatly into second place by the closing minutes, with Tom Kimber-Smith setting a best of 1:49.052.

With one car out, attention in the Boutsen camp turned to their LMPC entry, which had moved through to split the prototype/GT grid, three seconds to the good of the best GT time; a 1:59.915 from Jaime Melo in the JMB Ferrari. No clear distinction between the classes here at all, with a random shuffle of Pro and Am cars through to the ‘Am’ JMB Racing 458, 20th overall.

For a time it looked as if tail-end Charlie was going to be the Curtis Racing LMPC, but in the final minutes Alex Kapadia started to get into his stride, and eased a few places up the screen, following that with a 1:58.085 to move through ahead of all the GT cars, and claim his rightful place mid-field.

With three minutes to go Michel Frey in the #11 Race Performance Oreca leaped to the top of the screen with an almost implausibly quick time of 1:45.784, and was promptly warned to “observe the track limits”, having been seen to bypass an element in Turn 1. Nevertheless, the time stood, leaving the #11 topping the times as the chequered flag flew at 10.46.

Top three in each category:

P2
1. Race Performance Oreca 03 Judd (Michel Frey): 1:45.784
2. Murphy Prototypes Oreca 03 Nissan (Warren Hughes) 1:48.650
3. Greaves Motorsport Zytek Z11SN Nissan (Tom Kimber-Smith) 1:49.052

LMPC
12. Boutsen Ginion Racing FLM Oreca 09 1:56.173
13. Curtis Racing Technologies FLM Oreca 09. 1:58.085

GTE Pro
14. JMW Motorsport Ferrari 458. 1:59.168
15. JMB Racing Ferrari 458. 1:59.915
17. Kessel Racing Ferrari 458. 1:59.934

GTE Am
16. IMSA Performance Porsche 911 RSR. 1:59.921
18. Gulf Racing Aston Martin Vantage. 1:59.968
19. A F Corse Ferrari 458. 2:00.124

A full run-down of times will be posted shortly, but we’ve had issues here with the timing screens and the live timing has also been down.