Two Toyotas ahead of two Ferraris: That was the order after the second free practice session of the WEC in Sao Paulo. In their return to Brazil after ten years, the four LMH hypercars from Japan and Italy were fighting it out for the top spots in the time list.
The best time went to the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid (Buemi, Hartley, Hirakawa). Four-time Le Mans winner Sebastien Buemi was the fastest to complete a lap of the Formula 1 circuit in 1:25.727 minutes. The Swiss driver was more than half a second faster than his compatriot Nico Müller, who had achieved the best time (1:26.341 minutes) in the Peugeot in the first practice session.
2nd training extended after serious accident – Lexus destroyed
The second free practice session on Friday afternoon local time (19:30 – 21:45 CET) was extended by 45 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes. This allowed the teams and drivers to make up for the lost track time from the first practice session in the morning, which had to be stopped early after a serious accident.
On the drying track, French bronze driver Arnold Robin crashed the #78 Akkodis-Lexus RC F GT3 so badly that the car could not be repaired and had to be withdrawn from the competition. The 39-year-old Robin was flown to hospital by helicopter for examinations, but was able to return to the track shortly afterwards. According to the team, Kelvin van der Linde and Clemens Schmid did not suffer any serious injuries.
Training in Sao Paulo: Top-4 within five hundredths
The 19 Hypercar and now only 17 LMGT3 teams used the extended training to familiarize themselves with the largely unknown circuit on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Private test drives were not possible beforehand, and most of the preparation took place in the simulator.
Based on such signs, things were already noticeably close in training. Only 0.033 seconds behind Buemi, Kamui Kobayashi in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid (Conway, Kobayashi, De Vries) in second place. The team that recently finished second in Le Mans now has Mike Conway back at its disposal after the Briton had to miss the 24-hour race due to injury (bicycle accident).
The two factory Ferrari 499Ps were hot on the heels of the Toyota duo. Alessandro Pier Guidi led the Italian prototype with the starting number #51 (Pier Guidi, Giovinazzi, Calado) to within 0.043 seconds of the lead. Just six thousandths of a second behind him was the newly crowned Le Mans winner Antonio Fuoco in the #50 Ferrari (Fuoco, Molina, Nielsen). This meant that the top four in the classification were separated by less than five hundredths of a second!
Ferrari with technology update – factory Porsche in the back ranks
With a view to the WEC World Championship, Ferrari has the first technical update for the 499P, which debuted in 2023, in its luggage in Sao Paulo. The package includes new brake cooling ducts, a revised underbody and small flicks below the headlights. With the update, Ferrari wants to be able to keep up with the German competition from Porsche will challenge the lead in the drivers’ and manufacturers’ standings.
The two factory Porsche 963s from Penske only finished in 13th place (Estre, Lotterer, Laurens Vanthoor) and 14th place (Campbell, Christensen, Makowiecki). However, due to the different programs, the lap times in the WEC are negligible. This was demonstrated by the two customer Porsches from Jota, which finished in P6 (Stevens, Ilott, Nato) and P7 (Rasmussen, Hanson, Button) behind Toyota, Ferrari and the only Cadillac.
The top 10 were completed by the yellow #83 private Ferrari from AF Corse (Kubica, Shwartzman, Ye), the #99 customer Porsche from Proton Competition with the duo Neel Jani/Julien Andlauer and the #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 (Sheldon van der Linde, Rast, Frijns).
Mick Schumacher completes first WEC laps in Sao Paulo
Mick Schumacher completed his first Hypercar laps in Sao Paulo in the second practice session in the #36 Alpine A424. The former Formula 1 driver was behind the wheel for 16 laps and achieved a personal best time of 1:27.901 minutes. This was topped by teammate Nicolas Lapierre (1:27.295), but this was only enough for 17th place. The sister car driven by Austrian Ferdinand Habsburg ended up in twelfth position.
LMGT3: Akkodis-Lexus ‘avenges’ destroyed sister car
In the LMGT3 category, the #87 Akkodis-Lexus RC F GT3 (Kimura, Masson, Lopez) ‘avenged’ the failure of its sister car and topped the timesheet. Jose Maria Lopez, who was on the podium with Toyota as a replacement for Conway in Le Mans, set the best time in 1:35.725 minutes – around 10 seconds slower than the hypercars. The narrow track in Sao Paulo is considered a tricky matter with regard to traffic management in the mixed classes.
The #60 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 from Iron Lynx (Schiavoni, Cressoni, Perera) drove in the hands of Franck Perera – who was in action at GRT last week as a DTM substitute at the Norisring – to second place. The two Porsche 911 GT3 R from world championship leader Manthey finished in seventh place (Malykhin, Sturm, Bachler) and 15th place (Shahin, Schuring, Lietz). P16 went to the #46 WRT-BMW M4 GT3 driven by superstar Valentino Rossi, the sister car finished in 13th place.
WEC in Sao Paulo: This is how the schedule continues
On Saturday, another practice session awaits the Hypercar and LMGT3 teams (3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. CET), before qualifying later in the day (8:10 p.m. – 8:40 p.m. CET). The third practice session will be broadcast free of charge on the WEC YouTube channel. Qualifying can only be seen in the paid WEC app and behind the paywall on Eurosport 2. The start of the 6-hour race will be on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. German time (live on Sport1 on free TV and Eurosport 2).