Jose Maria Lopez has set the fastest time during a closely contested opening practice session ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Argentinean driver set the fastest time of 03:32:309 in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid to go quickest during the three-hour session.
Lopez’ best effort was just 0.086s faster than the #36 Alpine A480-Gibson driven by Andre Negrao, with Kazuki Nakajima third in the #8 sister Toyota.
Both Glickenhaus cars were somewhat further off the pace in sixth and seventh overall respectively, quicker than the top two cars in the LMP2 category.
The fastest time in the secondary prototype class was set by the #22 United Autosports ORECA 07-Gibson, driven by Phil Hanson.
Hanson was over six-tenths faster than the #26 G-Drive Racing Aurus 01 Gibson in the hands of Franco Colapino, with both cars outpacing the two Glickenhaus Hypercars driven by Richard Westbrook and Olivier Pla..
The #28 JOTA ORECA in the hands of Tom Blomqvist came in third, ahead of the #41 Team WRT ORECA in fourth and IDEC Sport fifth.
The session saw two separate red flags at opposite ends of the session, both caused by LMP2 cars. The first stoppage occurred mere seconds after the session had started as the result of a hit in the barrier at the Dunlop Chicane by Marco Sorensen’s #20 High Class Racing ORECA 07-Gibson.
Later, Antonio Felix da Costa became involved in an incident with the #47 Cetilar Racing Ferrari 488 GTE Evo of Antonio Fuoco, leaving both Fuoco and Da Costa’s #38 JOTA ORECA in the gravel at Tertre Rouge.
Further full course yellows were caused by stoppages for the JMW Motorsport Ferrari and DragonSpeed ORECA.
Daniel Serra set the fastest time in GTE Pro after a series of late improvements in the class, but the Brazilian driver ultimately came away with a time of 03:50:123 in the #52 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.
The AF Corse driver outpaced the #64 Corvette C8.R of Nick Tandy by just 0.040s, although both drivers were closely tailed by the GTE Am leader as Matteo Cairoli’s best effort in the #56 Team Project 1 Porsche 911 RSR-19 outpaced the majority of GTE Pro runners.
Cairoli’s 03:50:193 was just 0.030s off Tandy’s best time, and ahead of the factory-entered #91 Porsche driven by Gianmaria Bruni.
Bruni was third in class in GTE Pro, ahead of AF Corse’s James Calado and WeatherTech Racing’s Laurens Vanthoor in fourth and fifth respectively.
In GTE Am, Cairoli led a Porsche top-four lockout, with GR Racing’s Ben Barker, Dempsey-Proton Racing’s Julien Andlauer and Absolute Racing’s Alessio Picariello took the first four places ahead of Kessel Racing’s Mikkel Jensen in fifth with the quickest Ferrari.
