24 Hours of Le Mans – Free Practice 1: Bourdais puts Cadillac in the lead, a Mercedes in the wall

Week of 24 Hours of Le Mans resumed its rights this Wednesday with Free Practice 1. A three-hour driving session held in scorching heat and dominated by the Cadillac V-Series.R of Sébastien Bourdais, Jenson Button and Earl Bamber at the end of a session marked by several incidents.

Stephen Grove sends his Mercedes into the wall before the Dunlop

This session was marked by several incidents. The first occurred after barely ten minutes, when the No. 24 Nielsen Racing Oreca, shared by Naveen Rao, Cem Bölükbaşı and Colin Braun, spun, triggering a first yellow flag of around two minutes. A second interruption took place half an hour later, after the car went off the track. Ferrari 296 GT3 n°150 of the Richard Mille AF Corse, driven by Custodio Toledo, teammate of Lilou Wadoux and Riccardo Agostini.

After 1 hour and 16 minutes of driving, a red flag was raised again, this time following Stephen's exit from the track. Whole grained driving the Mercedes-AMG No. 63, just before the Dunlop chicane. This red flag was raised after about ten minutes. A second red flag was displayed at 15:39 p.m.

Peugeot at the back of the pack

A few minutes later, Sébastien Bourdais set the fastest time of the session in 3:25.148, driving the No. 38 Cadillac entered by Hertz Team JOTA. The Frenchman was 0.154 seconds ahead of the No. 50 Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen, Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina, as well as the Porsche No. 6 of Matt Campbell, Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor, relegated to 0.420 seconds. A fourth manufacturer slipped into 4th place with the Toyota GR010 Hybrid n°8 Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa.

The French manufacturers remained behind during this session, with a 9th place for theAlpine No. 35 by Paul-Loup Chatin, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi, while theAlpine n ° 36 of Mick Schumacher, Frédéric Makowiecki and Jules Gounon took 14th position. Peugeot closed the Hypercar category with the n°93 (Mikkel Jensen, Jean-Éric Vergne, Paul di Resta) ahead of the n°94 (Stoffel Vandoorne, Loïc duval, Malthe Jakobsen).

Akkodis ASP confirms in LMGT3

In LMP2, the No. 07 RLR M Sport Oreca 18, shared by Patrick Pilet, Ryan Cullen and Michael Jensen, set the fastest time in the category with a time of 3:36.888, ahead of the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition Oreca driven by Tom Dillmann, Jakub Śmiechowski and Nick Yelloly.

In the LMGT3 category, the No. 78 Lexus RC F from the French Akkodis ASP Team, entered by Arnold Robin, Jack Hawksworth and Finn Gehrsitz, achieved the best performance in 3:57.248.

The next track date is this Wednesday at 18:45 p.m. for the qualifying session. The LMGT3 and LMP2 cars will have 30 minutes to try to climb into the top 12, which means access to Hyperpole 1. The Hypercars will follow with 30 minutes to aim for the top 15. The other competitors will be assigned their grid positions. A session to follow live with commentary on AUTOhebdo.fr.

24 Hours of Le Mans
The ranking of Free Practice 1