Mathieu WARNIER, Media365, published on Sunday June 05, 2022 at 9:52 p.m.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans test day saw Toyota and Glickenhaus share the top four places when Alpine, lacking in top speed, could do no better than seventh.
The week of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is off to a good start. Six days before the start of the Le Mans classic, the 62 crews entered were able to take to the track this Sunday during two four-hour sessions. The opportunity for novices in the Sarthe, like Sébastien Ogier, to make their mark on the 13.626 kilometer long route. While the stopwatches did not heat up in the four hours of morning driving, the tone was raised in the afternoon. In this little game, the Toyota flanked by number 7 entrusted to Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José Maria Lopez set the best time in 3’29”896 but the margin with the competition is tenuous. Indeed, with Olivier Pla, Romain Dumas and Pipo Derani at the wheel, the Glickenhaus number 708 returned only 208 thousandths of a second to the Japanese prototype. A hierarchy which was confirmed with the Toyota n°8 which overtook the Glickenhaus n°709 for the third place of this day.
Alpine suffers at top speed
Fifth and last prototype entered in the Hypercar category at Le Mans, pending the arrival of the Peugeot 9X8 next July at Monza, the Alpine A480 could not do better than seventh time, two and a half seconds from the benchmark. According to Philippe Sinault, the concern of the old Rebellion R-13 chassis is top speed. “It’s so easy to draw conclusions on the fly when there are a lot of things to analyze… but we are missing the V-Max, yes”, confided the latter to the press at the end of the day. Difficulties that allow two LMP2 prototypes to fit between the Hypercars, those of the United Autosports USA team and the JOTA team. In the LMGTE Pro category, it was the official Corvette n°64 which settled at the top of the time sheets when, in LMGTE Am, the honors went to the Ferrari of Kessel Racing. The teams will now have three days to refine the settings for the first official free practice, scheduled for Wednesday.
ENDURANCE – WEC / 24 HOURS OF LE MANS
Ranking of the test day – Sunday, June 5, 2022
1- Toyota Gazoo Racing #7 (Conway-Kobayashi-Lopez/GBR-JAP-ARG/Toyota GR010 Hybrid) in 3’29”896
2- Glickenhaus Racing n°708 (Pla-Dumas-Derani/FRA-FRA/BRE/Glickenhaus 007 LMH) at 0”208
3- Toyota Gazoo Racing n°8 (Buemi-Hartley-Hirakawa/SUI-NZL-JAP/Toyota GR010 Hybrid) at 0”594
4- Glickenhaus Racing #709 (Briscoe-Westbrook-Mailleux/AUS-GBR-FRA/Glickehaus 007 LMH) at 0”926
5- United Autosports USA n°22 (Hanson-Albuquerque-Owen/GBR-POR-USA) at 2”203 (1st LMP2)
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33- #64 Corvette Racing (Milner-Tandy-Sims/USA-GBR-GBR/Chevrolet Corvette C8.R) at 24”105 (1st LMGTE Pro)
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40- Kessel Racing n°57 (Kimura-Schandorff-Jensen/JAP-DAN-DAN/Ferari 488 GTE EVO) at 24”931 (1st LMGTE Am)
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