Toyota Top Rain-Curtailed First Prologue Session At Sebring
A first session interrupted by, and then curtailed by a major storm front passing though saw the first times on the board for the two-day Prologue test for the 2022 FIA World Endurance Championship, being held for the first time at Sebring ahead of next Fridays’ season-opening 1000 Miles of Sebring.
The day started warm but with an increasingly stiff breeze ahead of the rain front – the track variously described as “very, very green”, “covered in dirt and mud” and “slippery as **** by the first three drivers encountered by the DSC Editor.
No surprise then that the times were far from stellar with LMP2 cars in amongst the four Hypercar entries when the session was finally halted after two of the programmed three hours.
That left the timesheets topped by Jose Maria Lopez in the #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 with a best of 1:51.223.
The second quickest was Ferdinand Habsburg in the first of the LMP2s, the Austrian posting a best lap of 1:51.640 in the #41 Realteam by WRT Oreca 07 Gibson.
That pipped the second Hypercar time by under a tenth, Nico Lapierre in the #36 Alpine A480 with a 1:51.703, who, in turn just pipped the second WRT Oreca, the #31 of Robin Frijns fourth quickest.
The onset of the rain saw a number of cars have brief but seemingly damage free ‘offs’ including Phil Hanson in the #23 United Autosports Orca and, apparently the #8 Toyota, both though would make it back to the pits before the red flag intervened.
The #83 AF Corse Oreca lapped briefly, slowly and stopped on track, the team apparently awaiting their spare car and spares package.
That all came after a red flag just as the rain started to fall around the track with the #92 Porsche Team 911 RSR stopped on track with an electronic issue – the car would though top the GTE times at sessions end, Michael Christensen producing a 1:58.543 to top a Porsche one-two from Richard Lietz with the full season debuting Corvette third fastest in the Pro class in the hands of Nick Tandy.
Matteo Cairoli produced yet another session-topping performance in GTE-Am, his #46 Team Project 1 Porsche splitting the GTE Pros with a 1:59.573, ahead of the #51 and #52 Ferraris.
Niki Thiim put the #98 Northwest AMR Aston Martin second fastest in GTE AM with Ben Barnicoat in the #56 Team Project 1 inception Racing Porsche third fastest in class.
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