Le Mans: Buemi fastest at pre-test
TOYOTA TOP On the official test day in preparation for the Le Mans 24 Hours (June 15/16), Sébastien Buemi in the Toyota set the fastest lap. But nothing has been won yet. Seven Swiss are on the grid. 62 Le Mans prototypes and GT cars lined up for the group picture before the start of the official test day. Thanks to two additional pit garages, on June 15 [...]
62 Le Mans prototypes and GT cars lined up for the group photo before the start of the official test day. Thanks to two additional pit garages, more participants than ever before in 86 editions to date will start the 24 Hours of Le Mans at 3 p.m. on June 15.
Toyota fast and reliable
It's no wonder that Toyota Gazoo Racing set the pace with its two TS050 Hybrids. However, they also completed by far the most laps on the 13.626-kilometer Circuit de la Sarthe, which also underlined their reliability.
With 3'19.440 (average 246 km/h), Sébastien Buemi was the fastest of all, followed by the second Toyota in 3'20.449. This has no particular significance for the driver from Vaud, who won Le Mans for the first time a year ago with Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima and leads the WEC standings ahead of the final round of the 2018/19 cross-season WEC Super Season.
Sébastien Buemi: "It was a positive day because we were able to cover a lot of kilometers and collect data. The car is unchanged from last year, so there were no surprises. It was just much hotter now, so we got a good feel for how the Toyota behaves in these conditions."
As all other teams do, the collected data will now be analyzed and the cars prepared on site for the race week starting with technical scrutineering on Whit Sunday.
Rebels on the lookout
Third fastest car was the private Rebellion R13-Gibson of André Lotterer (who set the time), Neel Jani and Bruno Senna in 3'21.323. Although the private LMP1 cars were brought closer to the two Japanese factory cars in terms of performance with concessions in the technical area (Equivalence of Technology), they can at best benefit from their problems in the race. Overall victory is not possible under their own steam. Rebellion Racing and the other LMP1 cars without hybrids will normally only fight it out for third place overall.
Seven Swiss under the Swiss flag
In addition to Buemi and Jani, five other Swiss will be competing at Le Mans. Jonathan Hirschi and Mathias Beche (both Oreca-Gibson) are hoping for a podium finish in the LMP2 category as in 2018, as is dual citizen Nicolas Lapierre from Geneva with Alpine, who is competing for France.
Corvette Racing's best time in the LMGTE-Pro and third place in the test with his own car gives Marcel Fässler the confidence to make it onto the podium in this fiercely competitive GT factory car class in terms of speed as well. He achieved this in 2011, 2012 and 2014 as overall winner with Audi.
Rahel Frey returns to Le Mans
Flight entrepreneur Thomas Flohr has the same ambitions in the LMGTE-Am class after the man from eastern Switzerland was able to experience this feeling last year. The third and fourth best test times of his fast team partners Giancarlo Fisichella and Castellacci on the Ferrari 488 GTE are a good target.
Rahel Frey and her two colleagues in the Ferrari of Kessel Racing have no chance of a good result based on pure speed (P9 among 17 teams on the test day), but on consistency. Rahel Frey last competed at Le Mans in 2010 in a Ford GT Matech.
Qualification on two evenings
Traditionally, the grid positions are decided in the evening hours on Wednesday and Thursday of next week. We'll go into the starting position before the start of the race after qualifying in the preliminary report on June 14.
lemans.org/fr/24-heures-du-mans
