Blancpain Endurance Series, Magny-Cours - Free Practice Report

Round four of the Blancpain Endurance Series at Magny-Cours got off to a wet start on Friday, as the rain kept falling down in the Nièvre department in central France.

As a result the 90 minutes long free practice session was declared a wet session and the pace of the 35 cars that took part was much slower than it had been in the Test Session on Thursday night.

In the end it was the nr 29 Vita4One Ferrari 458 that went quickest on Friday evening with German driver Michael Bartels setting the fastest time of the day, a 1:57.072. His lap time was over four tenths of a second quicker than the times posted by the two WRT - Belgian Audi Club Audi R8 LMS. Andrea Piccini posted the fastest time in the nr 33 car, with Stéphane Ortelli being the fastest driver in the nr 32 sister car.

Making its competition debut at Magny-Cours, albeit as part of its testing and development programme and not racing for result, was the Nissan GT-R GT3. David Brabham and Richard Westbrook were out on the track for that purpose and ended the session in eleventh position - not bad given the fact that the car had not done any laps in the wet yet.

In the Pro-Am cup it was Blancpain Endurance Series newcomer Autovitesse that was quickest, with Julien Piguet setting a 1:59.125. As the Blancpain-Reiter Lamborghini of Peter Kox and Marc A. Hayek has been withdrawn for this weekend due to Hayek not feeling well, the Autovitesse team seems to have taken over the role as the lead Lamborghini team at Magny-Cours.

Ruffier Racing, back after not racing at Spa, was quickest in the Gentlemen Trophy with Gregory Guilvert posting the fastest time. Fredy Barth in the Lotus Driving Academy Lotus Evora GT4 was quickest in GT4.

The weekend will continue with Pre Qualifying on Saturday morning.