FIA WEC, 6 Hours of Silverstone - Free Practice 1

LMP1 - Close At The Top

The first free practice session was a tale of two sub classes – or was it?

Dealing with the factory cars first, all three had times at the top of the order, all three finished the session pretty closely spaced and all three were quick – Really quick!

Comparing the times from the first free practice session to those from last season’s ILMC meeting the times were well over 2 seconds per lap faster by the session’s end

Alan McNish started the time attack with a 1:47.001 in the #2 R18 ultra, time that stood for a while before Treluyer edged ahead with a 1:46.736, followed rapidly by a 1:46.943 by Lapierre, the Toyota splitting the Audis.

Lapierre though wasn’t done yet and he soon topped the times with a 1:46.306, Treluyer was going quicker too but it took a while for the Audi Hybrid to better its Toyota rival – 1:46.167, later improving to a 1:45.777 to give the Audi the bragging rights with McNish then improving to go second fastest in the #1 car.

The Scot had had an incident on track after the Audi was hit on the rear left by the Krohn Ferrari but there was little or no damage to the R18.

Kazuki Nakajima meanwhile was now aboard the Toyota, and he was flying, the #7 car reclaimed second slot with a 1:46.010 – the three factory cars very close together on overall pace.

The petrol privateers meanwhile proved to be pretty closely matched too.

The pace setters though proved to be the pair of HPDs rather than the Rebellion Lola Toyotas, with the #12 car joining the session late after suffering a fuel leak.

JRM headed the pack with Karun Chandhok posting a 1:46.491, just 3 tenths shy of the #1 Audi!

The similar Strakka machine was over a second off that time but still fifth fastest overall ahead of the #12 and #13 Lolas.

LMP2 - #35 Morgan quickest

After a driver change for #35 Oak Racing Morgan since Le Mans, David Heinemeier Hansson was joined by the original Oak Racing LMP1 drivers Dominik Kraihamer and Bertrand Baguette after their LMP1 WEC programme in the #15 Judd powered Oak Pescarolo for the year was curtailed. It seems that the step down to P2 hasn’t done them any harm though, seeing as they finished at the top of the timings in the first session.

Initially, the session was led by the additional Greaves Motorsport entry of Martin and Alex Brundle and Lucas Ordonez.  Alex was putting in pretty quick lap times early in the session (his best being a 1:51.563), which gave them bragging rights for a good 50 minutes until Belgian ace Dominik Kraihamer in the #35 Morgan topped it by a mere 0.002 of a second!

Oak’s WEC points scoring car in LMP2 (#24, which has changed from a Judd to a Nisssan engine for the first time this weekend) was also very quick throughout the session and went third fastest with Mattieu Lahaye’s best lap being only three and a half tenths from the top of the LMP2 standings.

The Nissan engined cars were pretty dominant throuighout the session, aside from the main #41 Greaves entry which suffered from gearbox issues (allegedly an incorrectly assembled gearbox) which meant it only managed six laps. The only other runner with trouble was the Starworks Motorsport entry that was also late out on track after a turbo wiring issue. Peter Baron’s boys did manage to get it out for some solid lap times though, midway through the session, and it ended up sixth.

GTE Pro: First blood for AF Corse

The GTE Pro class was once again really closely matched on the timing sheets. There were a few changes throughout the session, notably the back and fourth between the  two AF Corse 458’s and the Felbermayer Proton Porsche, which is hopefully a good preview of what is to in the next two days.

At the beginning of the session, the main factory#97 Aston Martin V8 Vantage of Darren Turner led the class for a short period of time before the AF Corse Ferraris and Porsche took over the top three spots.

Gianmaria Bruni’s first meaningful time beat Turner’s 2:03.667 with a 2:03.524. That time looked for a while like it wouldn’t be beaten, but half an hour into the session, Richard Lietz started to improve his times and got the lone GTE Pro Porsche to the top of the standings with a 2:03.1.

Bruni though went faster again and his 2:02.757 would be good enough to top the times at the end of the session with a late improvement from Andrea Bertonlini securing an AF Corse 1,2 just ahead of the Felbemayer Porsche.

The only entry in GTE Pro which isn’t scoring points this weekend is the JMW Motorsport car.  The #60 car held onto third place in the early stage of the session, but slowly faded away when the others got up to speed. The plucky British squad eventually finished fifth in class, still though within a second of the fastest in class.

GTE AM: Af Corse dominate in Am too!

It was a reasonably quiet session for the Am class, but very promising for AF Corse and for the pair of Astons in what is their driver’s first run in the WEC.

The early part of the session was a duel between the Felbermayer and AF Corse entries, similar to GTE Pro. It was Paolo Ruberti of Felbermayer Proton and AF Corse’s Marco Cioci, who swapped the lead early on, but it was Cioci who showed the better pace and managed to put in a time that was a second quicker than Ruberti’s initial time!

Krohn Racing, and Nic Jonsson, got in amongst the leading order with a time of 2:04.568 but that was bettered by Stuart Hall in the #98 Aston Martin who would later put in a 2:04.1, second fastest.

The Beechdean sponsored V8 Vantage of Andrew Howard, BTCC, British GT and Porsche cup driver Johnny Adam and Strata 21’s Paul White made steady progress up through the order Howard ending the session 4th fastest.

GG and a debuting Stephen Kilbey