A warm welcome from the organisers, teams and all the competitors to the 6 Hours of Silverstone, the opening round of the 2014 FIA World Endurance Championship. The sun has been shining over the Northamptonshire circuit all morning, with a strong breeze keeping the flags flying proud, and the 27 cars entered for the race have now taken to the track for first 90 minutes of free practice.
The Porsche Team showed immediately that it means business – this being the first time the German manufacturer has returned to the top level of competition for decades – and it was the No.14 919 Hybrid which set the pace in this morning’s opening free practice session. Marc Lieb lapped the Silverstone circuit in a time of 1:44.042 in the car he shares with Neel Jani and Romain Dumas. Second overall was the No.1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Di Grassi-Duval-Kristensen, World Champion Loic Duval setting this car’s fastest lap, 1:44.470. Just two tenths of a second behind with a best lap of 1:44.661 was Anthony Davidson, the British Toyota driver celebrating his 35th birthday today, and will share the cockpit of the No.8 Toyota TS040 Hybrid with Nicolas Lapierre and Sébastien Buemi.
The new 2014 regulations, designed to bring the privateer LMP1 entries closer in lap time and performance to the manufacturer entries, seems to be bearing fruit as the fastest of the two Rebellion Racing Lola Toyotas, the No.12 of Prost-Heidfeld-Beche was just four tenths of a second behind the No.20 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Bernhard-Webber-Hartley. The No.13 Rebellion entry of Kraihamer-Belicchi-Leimer was a little further behind with a time of 1:46.418.
In LMP2 Roman Rusinov in the No.26 G-Drive Racing entry was the fastest this morning, the Russian setting a best lap of 1:51.004 in the Morgan-Nissan he will share with Olivier Pla and Julien Canal, seven tenths of a second ahead of the second-placed entry in this category. This was the No.27 SMP Racing ORECA 03 Nissan, Nicolas Minassian stopping the clocks at 1:51.743 – half a second ahead of the No.47 KCMG ORECA 03 Nissan from Hong Kong. Briton Richard Bradley was the pace-setter in this car.
A second 90-minute practice session will take place this afternoon at 15:55 hrs (local time) and full results from this morning can be found HERE.
Fiona Miller
Photo: SILVERSTONE CIRCUIT (SILVERSTONE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, UK), 6 HOURS OF SILVERSTONE, FRIDAY 18 APRIL 2014. The No.14 Porsche 919 Hybrid set the pace in Free Practice 1 for the 6 Hours of Silverstone
