An LM P2 dominates Free Practice 1 at Spa

That's it, after two days of Prologue, the 2021 season of the World ChampionshipEndurance was officially launched. Free Practice 1 of the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps has just ended on a dry track despite the downpour that hit the region at lunchtime.

As in the Prologue, the hierarchy is surprising. If some believe that the Toyota GR010 Hybrid andAlpine A480 are hiding their game, we are seriously starting to doubt it.

Already the most energetic during the Prologue, the No. 07 United Autosports Oreca 22 once again set the reference time in 2'04"083. Complying with LM P2 regulations and entrusted to the trio Filipe Albuquerque-Phil Hanson-Fabio Scherer, the latter was ahead of theAlpine A480 by Matthieu Vaxiviere-André negrao-Nicolas lapierre, who is the fastest in the premier category.

The top three is completed by another Oreca 07, the No. 28 of the RealTeam (behind which hides TDS Racing), at the wheel of which we find Esteban Garcia, Norman Nato and Loïc duval.

And the Toyota GR010 Hybrid will you tell us? Lopez's No. 7-Conway-Kobayashi and n°8 of Buemi-Nakajima-Hartley are respectively 7th and 10th, 0”491 and 0”864 behind the fastest LM P2! While there are many factors to take into consideration, we are seriously starting to wonder if the fight for overall victory on Saturday is not going to involve many more cars than we think...

In GTE Pro, the advantage goes to both Porsche 911 RSR-19, the No. 92 of Kévin Estre-Neel Jani ahead of the No. 91 of Richard Lietz-Gianmaria Bruni. Both Ferrari 488 GTE Evos from AF Corse are in the wake of the two Germans, while the Corvette C8.R is a second away, beaten by two GTE Am cars.

GTE Am, a category dominated by three Porsche 911 RSR-19s. The No. 56 fielded by Team Project 1 (Riccardo Pera-Matteo Cairoli-Egidio Perfetti) preceded the No. 77 (Christian Ried-Jaxon Evans-Matt Campbell) and No. 88 (Andrew Haryanto-Marco Seefried-Alessio Picariello) operated by Dempsey Proton Racing.

See you tomorrow morning, at 9:30 a.m., for the second free practice session.