On a damp but drying track, the first 90-minute Free Practice Session took place this morning for the 6 Hours of Shanghai at the Shanghai International Circuit. As the session progressed times fell considerably, with both teams and drivers re-familiarising themselves with the track and conditions improving.
The No.98 Aston Martin Vantage from the LMGTE Am category set the pace amongst the GT cars and it was Pedro Lamy who posted the best lap of the session with a time of 2:06.056, one tenth of a second ahead of the GTE Pro championship leaders Bruni/Vilander in the No.51 AF Corse Ferrari (2:06.153). The two Porsche Team Manthey 911 RSRs were close behind the F458 Italia, with just one hundredth of a second separating the Porsche factory drivers in both cars.
It was another Am entry which then followed in the classification. Second in class, and classified marginally ahead of the No.71 AF Corse Ferrari and the No.97 Pro Aston Martin entry, was the No.95 Aston Martin of Richie Stanaway who is replacing Nicki Thiim for the Chinese round. The young New Zealander stopped the clocks at 2:06.981.
Just 1.1 seconds separated the top eight cars across the two classes, an indication of how close it is, and there is surely more to come from everyone in the 90-minute second free practice session which starts at 15h30 this afternoon.
Full practice times can be found HERE
Fiona Miller
