The track action burst into life at the official Prologue test day at Circuit Paul Ricard this morning. The initial four hour session was held under bright and sunny skies but a vicious Mistral wind made for some tricky track conditions.
Topping the timing screens was the #18 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Romain Dumas/Neel Jani and Marc Lieb. The 2015-spec car, which was confirmed to run in the maximum 8MJ energy retrieval sub-class yesterday, set a best time of 1m39.292 after just thirty minutes of running. The time was almost exactly two seconds faster than last year’s best Prologue lap set by Brendon Hartley.
Behind the Porsche, early indications point toward another fierce battle in prospect for 2015. The reigning champions Toyota Motorsports placed P2 with Anthony Davidson peaking on a 1m39.949s in the Toyota TS 040 HYBRID that he shares with Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima. Just behind the #1 Toyota was the second Porsche 919 Hybrid of Brendon Hartley, Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard.
Audi Sport Team Joest placed P4 and P5 with their new-look 2015 car. The two Audi R18 e-tron quattros completed fewer laps than their competitors this morning as they continued their development ahead of the first round of the WEC at Silverstone next month.
The LMP2 class was headed by the new ORECA 05 of KCMG. Last year’s COTA, Bahrain and Interlagos class winners had a mixed session, however. Nick Tandy spent the first part of the session getting familiar with his first lap in any LMP2 car, before Richard Bradley set the best in class time of 1m48.924s.
Soon after the car had an excursion at Le Beausset and suffered a small amount of damage to the front bodywork. The car will be repaired and is expected to take part in the second session this afternoon.
The LMGTE Pro category saw reigning champions Gianmaria Bruni start 2015 as he finished 2014 with an assured early performance to place P1 in the AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia. Bruni set a 1m58.154s lap and will be joined this afternoon by Toni Vilander. It was incredibly close behind them as the pair of Team Manthey Porsche 911 RSRs was within 0.060 seconds of the Ferrari. The #92 Porsche headed the #91.
In LMGTE Am Aston Martin Racing led the way with the #96 car of Francesco Castellaci/Roald Goethe and Stuart Hall. They set a 1m59.198s to lead the Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche of Christian Reid/Khaled Al Qubaisi and Klaus Bachler.
The second session will get underway at 14.00 cet for another four hour session.
Times for the session can be found HERE
