FIA WEC – Toyota lead the way after disrupted practice sessions

Rebellion suffer accident damage, Bruno Senna out for the weekend, Toyota lead both sessions.

The #7 Toyota set the top time in FP1 in the hands of Mike Conway, putting in a 1:39.916. The sister car of Alonso, Buemi and Nakajima wasn’t far behind only 3 tenths off the time of the #7 Toyota of Conway, Kobayashi and Lopez.

Mathias Beche, Thomas Laurent and Gustavo Menezes wrestled the #3 Rebellion around to end the session best of the rest with a 1:40.043. EOT tweak has been made, but still, the Non Hybrids are a full second off the pace of the Toyota’s.

From Rebellion being best of the rest, their luck switched the opposite end of the scale. The #1 Rebellion in the hands of Bruno Senna lost it going into Copse corner, pitching the car off into the barrier. Bruno was out of the car quickly but in pain, he was shipped off to the medical centre for checks before being transferred to hospital. Senna has now been confirmed as having a fracture in his ankle, he will miss the rest of the weekend. Rebellions mechanics are working overtime as we speak to repair the car for FP3 on Saturday morning.

In LMP2 the #28 TDS Racing Oreca chassis driven by Francois Perodo, Mathieu Vaxiviere and Loic Duval set the times in FP1 but it was split for FP2 when #38 Jackie Chan DC racing claimed the quickest time. Championship leader in LMP2 the #36 Alpine Signatech machine was in 3rd in FP1 and 2nd quickest in FP2. All three cars seem to have the balance right and the pace to challenge for the class win.

In FP1 the#66 Ford GT led the way with a 1:56.852 in the hands of Stefan Mucke and Olivier Pla with its sister car 0.8 behind. FP2 saw the sister machine the #67 Ford top the times with the now BOP tweaked #97 Aston Martin Vantage sitting second at the end of the session, some great potential for the Aston Martin squad after a disappointing Le Mans with the new Machine.

GTE-AM continues to be dominated by Dempsey proton Racing from their class win at Le Mans. The #88 Porsche driven by Matteo Cairoli managed a 1:59.418 with the team’s second car just 0.2 seconds behind. Gulf Racing #86 made it a 1-2-3 in FP1 for Porsche.

FP2 was again topped by the #88 but this time the AM Aston Martin Vantage, the older chassis, #98 driven by Pedro Lamy, Paul Dalla Lana and Matthias Lauda was second quickest in FP2.