The sights and sounds of some of the entrants for the Le Mans 24 Hours rang out at the Circuit des 24 Heures yesterday as nine teams took advantage of the permanent Bugatti circuit to shake down their cars following preparation work after Sunday's official test day.
In the blue riband category, LMP1, the four manufacturers entering works cars were present: the three Audi R18 e-tron quattros driven by Benoit Tréluyer, Lucas Di Grassi and René Rast, the two Toyota TS040 HYBRIDS, the three Porsche 919 Hybrids and the No.22 Nissan GT-R LM NISMO as well as the two Rebellion R-One-AERs for Mathias Beche and Nicolas Prost.
In the LMP2 category OAK Racing was able to test its two Ligier JS P2 HPDs and these were driven by Kevin Estre, who was racing in the USA on Sunday, Gustavo Yacaman and Pipo Derani (to set up the car shared by Nicolet, Merlin and Maris next week). Also running was the No.36 Alpine A450B entered by Signatech Alpine with Paul-Loup Chatin, the two new Russian BR01 prototypes, No.27 and 37 entered by SMP Racing, and KCMG’s No.47 ORECA Nissan.
No times were recorded during these sessions and there were no incidents.
Ralf Jüttner, Audi Sport Team Joest: “We took advantage of the two runs to carry out the usual checks as we’ve completely rebuilt the cars since Sunday. We were just verifying that everything’s okay. It wasn’t a test day, just a fettling-in exercise to check all the on-board systems in the car. We kept only three drivers; the others have gone home. Cars nos 8 and 9 almost finished their work in the morning. We had just a couple of small things to check on no. 7 in the afternoon.”
John Steeghs, Toyota Racing: "All our drivers are here. We did some refuelling simulations and technical interventions on the two cars. Some parts have been changed since Sunday. Certain elements on the Toyota TS040 HYBRID won’t be put back on till Thursday’s qualifying sessions, not long before the race. We were not looking to set a time as the regulations oblige us to use specific tyres for today’s running.”
Andreas Seidl, Porsche Team: “In compliance with the regulations that limit the number of test days in the year, each of our Porsches only had the right to an hour’s track time today. So we ran in some parts for next week like the brakes and suspension elements among other things. Brendon Hartley in no.17, Neel Jani in no.18 and Nick Tandy in no.19 did the driving.”
Ben Bowlby, Nissan Motorsport: “We’ve got a huge workload but we’re just testing with a single car, the no.22 Nissan GT-R LM NISMO for all the specificities of the Le Mans 24 Hours: pit stops, respecting the speed limits in the pits and driver changes. They’re all there working flat out!”
Information thanks to ACO Communications
