Porsche have once again confirmed their pace in Sao Paulo. The German marque aiming to achieve their first win in the top flight of prototype racing for well over a decade.
It was a swap at the top of the order with the #14 leading the #20 for the first time this weekend. Neel Jani set the blistering lap time of 1:17:572, going fastest of the event so far. 0.3 seconds back was the #20 Porsche in seconds position. Toyota returned to the top 3 with Buemi and Davidson putting the #8 Toyota third fastest, but still 0.8 seconds off the pace of the Porsche. The #7 Toyota was fourth fastest, followed by the #2 and #1 Audi’s respectively. The #12 Rebellion beat the sister #13 car by 0.1 seconds. The gap between the Light and Hybrid runners standing at 2.5 seconds.
In LMP2 G-Drive once again finished the session ahead of the #27 SMP Racing ORECA, this time by 1 second. Third in Class was the #37 SMP Racing ORECA, which was a further 0.3 seconds behind its team mate. KCMG fell foul to an electrical issue which forced the team to stay in the pit box and complete no laps in the session.
It was Darren Turner and Stafan Mucke’s turn to go fastest in the GTE-PRO class. The Aston Martin duo leading a very tightly packed PRO field. The #97 Aston Martin was just 0.1 seconds ahead of the second place #92 Porsche, the #91 Porsche just #0.52 of a second behind that. Alex MacDowell, Darryl O’Young and Fernando Rees set the fourth fastest time in class in their Aston Martin, a fitting 0.007 seconds off of the #91 car. The #71 car lead the #51 for AF Corse. Although they were the 2 slowest cars in class for that session, the Itallian team is still within a second of the fastest time in class
GTE-AM saw the #95 Aston Martin return to the top of the class, with a time good enough for second in GTE-PRO. The #61 car of Emerson Fittipaldi jumped back up to second in class, just 0.2 seconds off the class pace. The top 3 in class was rounded out by the #88 Porsche of Christian Ried, Klaus Bachler, Khaled Al Qubaisi.
Qualifying is to follow at 4:45 today.
Image: Walter Schruff