Just as the floodlights lit up the Bahrian International Circuit, so too did Marcel Fässler this evening, as the Swiss ace set a scorching pace in the Audi R18 e-tron quattro he shares with André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer.
Fässler’s time of 1m42.133s was set after thirty minutes of the ninety minute and was never beaten to give a boost to Audi Sport Team Joest as they attempt to chase down the No.17 Porsche for the Drivers’ title.
Loic Duval ensured it was a 1-2 for the Ingolstadt marque tonight after the Frenchman set a 1m43.291s lap in the No.8 Audi R18 e-tron quattro.
Porsche Team appeared to be concentrating on perfecting race set-ups rather than an out-and-out qualifying run during the session. The No.17 Porsche 919 Hybrid headed the No.18 car, with the two separated by just under 0.2s. Brendon Hartley and Neel Jani set the times respectively this evening.
Toyota got closer to the pace in tonight’s running as Alex Wurz’s 1m43.931s lap in the No.2 Toyota TS 040 HYBRID got to within 0.4s of the fourth placed Porsche.
LMP2 saw the No.28 G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan had the times for almost all of the session. Pipo Derani set a rapid best of 1m50.029s to outpace the KCMG ORECA in which Nick Tandy’s best was seven tenths off the rookie Brazilian’s time. KCMG ended the session stopped at the side of the track after Matt Howson pulled the ORECA 05-Nissan off at turn twelve.
The Signatech Alpine driven by Tom Dillmann ended third this evening, while the title leading No.26 G-Drive Ligier-Nissan placed fourth, in the hands of Sam Bird.
In the LMP1 Privateer class the ByKolles CLM P1/01 got between the Rebellion Racing R-One-AER pair. Pierre Kaffer’s 1m49.200s was just under a second adrift of the No.12 Rebellion entry.
This evening’s session saw just a single Full Course Yellow after ten minutes when Khaled Al Qubaisi beached his Proton Porsche 911 RSR in the gravel at turn three.
Several cars were shown the black and white warning flag for persistent abuses of track limits at turn four. Among them were both of the Toyotas, the No.7 Audi and the KCMG ORECA.
The third and final free practice session gets underway at 11am local time tomorrow.
All results from the two practice sessions so far can be found HERE
