The second practice session at the 24 Hours of Le Mans was overshadowed by a serious accident just moments before the end of the session. Callum Ilott crashed Jota’s Porsche 963 in Tetre Rouge, severely destroying the front of the car. The Briton was uninjured in the accident, as the Porsche private team announced.
In the time tables, the second practice session at the Le Mans 24 Hours was once again a matter for Toyota. As in FP1 in the afternoon, the Japanese also finished the night session at the top. Once again, it was vehicle #8 (Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa) that took first place. Toyota thus ended the day with two of the three best times. However, the qualifying was a disaster for the five-time Le Mans winners.
Le Mans, FP2: Toyota half a second ahead
During the night, the Toyota defeat was no longer noticeable. The car was more than half a second behind the rest of the field. The lap times in this session were hardly relevant anyway, as all teams were preparing for the long runs at night. The Toyota GR010’s best time was more than three seconds slower than the time with which BMW had prevailed in qualifying.
Second place in the evening session went to the privately entered AF Corse Ferrari #83 (Kubica/Shwartzman/Ye) with a gap of 0.524 seconds. Close behind was the Penske factory Porsche #6 (Estre/Lotterer/L.Vanthoor) and the Jota Porsche #12 (Stevens/Nato/Ilott), which later crashed. The Alpine with the #35, which Mick Schumacher shares with the two Frenchmen Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere, took fifth place.
Penalties for Ferrari
Punish: During the night practice, it was announced that two vehicles would receive a penalty for the race. These were two Ferraris. Both the factory-entered #51 Ferrari (Giovinazzi/Pier Guidi/Calado) and the private #83 AF Corse Ferrari (Kubica/Shwartzman/Ye) received a 10-second penalty because they had parked outside the designated pit stop area during qualifying.
Ferrari also announced on Wednesday that it will continue to take action against the outcome of the 6-hour race in Spa. Read more here:
Incidents: The first hour of the two-hour night practice was relatively quiet, but then things got more turbulent: the #311 Whelen-Cadillac suffered a puncture shortly after half-time and rolled back to the pits in safety car mode. The Alpine #35, with Ferdinand Habsburg at the wheel again, was again affected by a technical problem. The car had been affected by a similar phenomenon in FP1.
The #14 Oreca from AP by TF (Hyett/Deletraz/Quinn) caused a strange and at the same time frightening situation when a wheel came loose on the out lap. The stewards are investigating due to a possible unsafe release. Shortly before the end of the training there was another upset in the BMW camp: Dries Vanthoor crashed head-on into the tire stack in the Indianapolis corner with the BMW M Hybrid V8 #15 (D. Vanthoor/Marciello/Wittmann) after braking too late, destroying the nose.
Shortly before the end of the time, Callum Ilott had a serious accident, which caused a red flag to be brought out. While the cars were returning to the pits in droves, Nicky Catsburg in the #45 Crowdstrike by APR car from the LMP2 class had an embarrassing incident: he spun at the entrance to the pit lane.