Sebring WEC: Toyota remains ahead in night practice
Toyota again locked out the top two spots in the times during Wednesday evening's second practice session for this week's Sebring 1000 Miles FIA World Endurance Championship round.
Photo by: Alexander Trienitz
Jose Maria Lopez put the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid ahead with an early best lap of 1m41.730s, going marginally quicker than Kazuki Nakajima had managed in first practice earlier in the day.
The Argentine's time would remain untroubled for the remainder of the 90-minute session.
Nakajima was again the quickest of the #8 Toyota drivers, but his best effort of 1m42.517s, which came around the halfway mark, was 0.787s adrift.
There was some late drama for the #8 crew when Fernando Alonso suffered a spin at Turn 1, albeit without consequences.
SMP Racing reversed the non-hybrid LMP1 pecking order from FP1 with the third and fourth-fastest times for its pair of AER-powered BR Engineering BR1s.
Stephane Sarrazin posted a marginally quicker time in the #17 car, 1.279s off the pace and exactly one hundredth up on SMP newcomer Brendon Hartley in the #11 machine.
Thomas Laurent headed the Rebellion Racing charge in fifth place, ahead of Bruno Senna in the second Rebellion R13-Gibson and Ben Hanley in the DragonSpeed BR1.
Jackie Chan DC Racing led the way in the LMP2 class courtesy of a 1m47.716s effort from Stephane Richelmi at the wheel of the #37 Oreca 07.
That was enough to beat Nicolas Lapierre in the #36 Signatech Alpine Oreca by just under half a second.
The DragonSpeed Oreca caused an early full-course yellow when it shed its left-rear wheel while Anthony Davidson was aboard, although the American squad was able to return to the track after a delay of almost an hour.
GTE Pro was led by Aston Martin as Alex Lynn logged a best of 1m57.792s in the #97 Vantage GTE.
Ford occupied the next two spots in class, as Harry Tincknell's time in the #67 fell just short 0.033s short of Lynn's but eclipsed teammate Stefan Mucke's by a tenth.
The best of the Ferrari 488 GTEs, the #51 car, was fifth, behind the #95 Aston Martin, while Porsche's top representative was the points-leading #92 car in sixth.
Corvette Racing's sole C7.R propped up the class leaderboard in 11th.
Ben Barker put in a late flyer of 1m59.327s to move the Gulf Racing Porsche squad to the top of the times in GTE Am, a little under a tenth up on Giancarlo Fisichella's Spirit of Race Ferrari.
Project 1 Racing, which didn't take part in FP1 as it built up the spare chassis that arrived at Sebring on Wednesday morning, completed 27 laps and ended up eighth of the nine runners in class.
Practice times:
Pos. | # | Drivers | Car | Class | Laps | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 7 | Kamui Kobayashi Mike Conway Jose Maria Lopez |
Toyota TS050 Hybrid | LMP1 | 45 | 1'41.730 | |
2 | 8 | Fernando Alonso Kazuki Nakajima Sébastien Buemi |
Toyota TS050 Hybrid | LMP1 | 48 | 1'42.262 | 0.532 |
3 | 17 | Sergey Sirotkin Stéphane Sarrazin Egor Orudzhev |
BR Engineering BR1 | LMP1 | 34 | 1'43.009 | 1.279 |
4 | 11 | Vitaly Petrov Brendon Hartley Mikhail Aleshin |
BR Engineering BR1 | LMP1 | 31 | 1'43.019 | 1.289 |
5 | 3 | Nathanael Berthon Thomas Laurent Gustavo Menezes |
Rebellion R13 | LMP1 | 36 | 1'43.362 | 1.632 |
6 | 1 | Bruno Senna Neel Jani Mathias Beche |
Rebellion R13 | LMP1 | 40 | 1'44.064 | 2.334 |
7 | 10 | Henrik Hedman Renger van der Zande Ben Hanley |
BR Engineering BR1 | LMP1 | 34 | 1'46.050 | 4.320 |
8 | 38 | Ho-Pin Tung Stéphane Richelmi Gabriel Aubry |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 37 | 1'47.716 | 5.986 |
9 | 36 | Nicolas Lapierre Pierre Thiriet Andre Negrao |
Alpine A470 | LMP2 | 40 | 1'48.213 | 6.483 |
10 | 28 | Loic Duval François Perrodo Matthieu Vaxiviere |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 40 | 1'48.316 | 6.586 |
11 | 37 | Will Stevens David Heinemeier Hansson Jordan King |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 40 | 1'49.119 | 7.389 |
12 | 50 | Gunnar Jeannette Romano Ricci Erwin Creed |
Ligier JSP 217 | LMP2 | 38 | 1'50.463 | 8.733 |
13 | 31 | Anthony Davidson Pastor Maldonado Roberto Gonzalez |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 18 | 1'50.497 | 8.767 |
14 | 29 | Giedo van der Garde Nyck de Vries Frits van Eerd |
Dallara P217 | LMP2 | 8 | 1'53.842 | 12.112 |
15 | 97 | Maxime Martin Alex Lynn |
Aston Martin Vantage AMR | LMGTE PRO | 38 | 1'57.792 | 16.062 |
16 | 67 | Harry Tincknell Jonathan Bomarito Andy Priaulx |
Ford GT | LMGTE PRO | 35 | 1'57.825 | 16.095 |
17 | 66 | Stefan Mücke Olivier Pla Billy Johnson |
Ford GT | LMGTE PRO | 35 | 1'57.961 | 16.231 |
18 | 51 | James Calado Alessandro Pier Guidi Daniel Serra |
Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | LMGTE PRO | 33 | 1'58.063 | 16.333 |
19 | 95 | Marco Sorensen Nicki Thiim Darren Turner |
Aston Martin Vantage AMR | LMGTE PRO | 35 | 1'58.098 | 16.368 |
20 | 92 | Michael Christensen Kevin Estre |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE PRO | 38 | 1'58.388 | 16.658 |
21 | 91 | Gianmaria Bruni Richard Lietz |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE PRO | 40 | 1'58.447 | 16.717 |
22 | 71 | Sam Bird Davide Rigon Miguel Molina |
Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | LMGTE PRO | 39 | 1'58.622 | 16.892 |
23 | 82 | Antonio Felix da Costa Bruno Spengler Augusto Farfus |
BMW M8 GTE | LMGTE PRO | 37 | 1'58.706 | 16.976 |
24 | 81 | Nick Catsburg Martin Tomczyk Alexander Sims |
BMW M8 GTE | LMGTE PRO | 40 | 1'58.731 | 17.001 |
25 | 63 | Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia Mike Rockenfeller |
Chevrolet Corvette C7R | LMGTE PRO | 29 | 1'58.795 | 17.065 |
26 | 86 | Michael Wainwright Benjamin Barker Thomas Preining |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 38 | 1'59.327 | 17.597 |
27 | 54 | Giancarlo Fisichella Francesco Castellacci Thomas Flohr |
Ferrari 488 GTE | LMGTE AM | 37 | 1'59.407 | 17.677 |
28 | 88 | Gianluca Roda Matteo Cairoli Giorgio Roda |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 36 | 1'59.457 | 17.727 |
29 | 61 | Matthew Griffin Matteo Cressoni Luis Perez Companc |
Ferrari 488 GTE | LMGTE AM | 34 | 1'59.549 | 17.819 |
30 | 98 | Pedro Lamy Paul Dalla Lana Mathias Lauda |
Aston Martin Vantage | LMGTE AM | 35 | 1'59.778 | 18.048 |
31 | 70 | Olivier Beretta Eddie Cheever III Motoaki Ishikawa |
Ferrari 488 GTE | LMGTE AM | 37 | 1'59.853 | 18.123 |
32 | 77 | Christian Ried Matthew Campbell Julien Andlauer |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 18 | 2'00.136 | 18.406 |
33 | 56 | Jörg Bergmeister Patrick Lindsey Egidio Perfetti |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 32 | 2'00.156 | 18.426 |
34 | 90 | Jonathan Adam Salih Yoluc Charles Eastwood |
Aston Martin Vantage | LMGTE AM | 40 | 2'00.789 | 19.059 |
Be part of Motorsport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments