Porsche has secured its first best time at the fifth race weekend of the 2024 WEC season in Sao Paulo. Returning to the Brazilian Formula 1 circuit after ten years, there were even three Porsche 963s at the top of the timesheets at the end of the third free practice session.
The #12 Jota customer Porsche (Stevens, Ilott, Nato) in the hands of Callum Ilott achieved the best lap time on the 4.309-kilometer Formula 1 track in the dress rehearsal before today’s qualifying (8:10 p.m. – 8:40 p.m. CET). The Briton needed 1:24.297 minutes for his fastest lap and was the first driver this weekend to break the 1:25 mark. Ilott was around 1.5 seconds faster than Sebastien Buemi, who had given Toyota the best time in the second practice session on Friday.
WEC training in Sao Paulo: Porsche trio at the top
The teams did a few short runs early in the one-hour practice session to prepare for qualifying, before the programs quickly focused on long runs. Tire supplier Michelin has the medium and hard category compounds on offer for Sao Paulo, which need to be understood on the largely unknown track. During practice, temperatures were only 15 degrees (track: 18 degrees), and it is expected to be significantly warmer on Sunday during the 6-hour race.
Mick Schumacher’s teammate involved in collision
There were no major changes in the timesheet after the early qualifying exercises. Behind the Porsche trio, Charles Milesi drove in the #35 Alpine A424 (Habsburg, Milesi, Chatin) in fourth position. The sister Alpine, in which Mick Schumacher makes his WEC debut, came in eleventh.
Schumacher achieved the fastest time of the #36 trio during his 9 laps in 1:25.114 minutes, which is completed by the two Frenchmen Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere. Vaxiviere caused the only ‘excitement’ of the training after 20 minutes when he collided with the Isotta Fraschini in turn 8. The Italian LMH prototype spun on the track, but was able to continue driving shortly afterwards, and Vaxiviere got off with a warning.
BMW with its prototypes front and rear
The two Toyota GR010 Hybrids did not chase times in the third practice session and ended up in 13th and 14th place. The #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 (Sheldon van der Linde, Rast, Frijns) was at the bottom of the 19-car Hypercar category, around three seconds behind the leading Porsche.
In the LMGT3 class, in which only 17 cars are competing after the serious accident involving the Akkodis Lexus, a Porsche also came out on top. The #92 911 (Malykhin, Sturm, Bachler) of the German team Manthey took the lead with a time of 1:35.488. The Porsche 911 GT3 R was followed by the #95 McLaren 720 S GT3 from United Autosports (Caygill, Pino, Sato) and the #85 women’s Lamborghini from the Iron Dames (Bovy, Frey, Gatting) in second and third place.