EL1 – Toyota and Porsche in one handkerchief

The first free practice session for the 6 Hours of Shanghai, penultimate round of the WEC 2017, was postponed by an hour and a half following a technical problem affecting the means of communication between the race direction and the track marshals.

It didn't bother Mike conway qui, très rapidement, a signé un tour en 1’47 »182 qui restera le chrono de référence de cette session. La Toyota TS050 Hybrid n°7 qu’il partage avec José-Maria Lopez et Kamui Kobayashi a devancé de 0 »232 la Porsche 919 Hybrid n°1 du trio Jani-Lotterer-Tandy. Suivent à respectivement 0 »455 et 0 »747 la Porsche n°2 (Bamber-Bernhard-Hartley) et la Toyota n°8 (Buemi-Davidson-Nakajima).

In LM P2, the No. 07 Oreca 13 from Vaillante Rebellion took the lead. In 1'52"533, the trio Beche-Heinemeier Hansson-Piquet Jr beat the no. 26 of G-Drive Racing (N. Müller-Roussel-Rusinov) and the no. 25 of CEFC Manor TRS Racing (Petrov-Trummer -González). The three contenders for the title follow, namely the No. 38 of Jackie Chan DC Racing (Laurent-Tung-Jarvis), the No. 31 of Vaillante Rebellion (Canal-N. Cheers-B. Senna) and No. 36 from Signatech Alpine (Menezes-negrao-Stone).

Ford climbed to the top of the GTE Pro timesheet thanks to the #66 Mücke-Pla GT, credited with a lap time of 2'02"693. She preceded theAston Martin Vantage No. 97 of Adam-Turner and the Porsche 911 RSR of Lietz-Makowiecki. If seven of the eight cars lined up in the category are grouped in the same second, the Ferrari n°51 (Calado-Pier Guidi) and n°71 (Bird-Rigon) bring up the rear, the first mentioned conceding 0”9 in the reference time.

Finally, in GTE Am, it was the No. 488 Ferrari 54 GTE of Molina-Flohr-Castellacci which stood out in 2’04”789. The Italian entered by Spirit of Race beat the #911 Porsche 77 RSR (Cairoli-Dienst-Ried) and the #98 Aston Martin Vantage (Dalla Lana-Lamy-Lauda).

The second session is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. French time.