Kamui Kobayashi topped the times in the first of the two three-hour sessions of the Le Mans Test Day on Sunday with a 3m28.467s lap aboard the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar.
That gave him a margin of more than seven tenths over Porsche driver Kevin Estre, who ended up on a 3m29.205s aboard the #6 963 LMDh fielded by the factory Porsche Penske Motorsport team.
BMW took third sport with the best of its M Hybrid V8 LMDhs run by the WRT squad, Robin Frijns getting within a second of the pace with a 3m29.433s in the #20 entry.
Lamborghini, which has struggled with its SC63 LMDh so far in the WEC this year, took fourth place.
Mirko Bortolotti got down to a 3m29.639s early in the session aboard the #63 full-season WEC entry from the Iron Lynx team before leaving for Zandvoort to contest the second of the two DTM races this weekend.
Top Ferrari was the satellite entry from AF Corse in the hands of Robert Kubica, whose 3m29.732s gave the #83 499P LMH fifth place in the opening session.
The second Toyota rounded out the top six with a 3m28.823s from Sebastien Buemi.
#6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 of Kevin Estre, Andre Lotterer, Laurens Vanthoor
Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
Porsche took sixth and seventh with its remaining factory entries in the Hypercar class, Michael Christensen just shading Mathieu Jaminet by under a tenth.
Peugeot got one of its revised 9X8 LMHs into the top 10 with a time from Mikkel Jensen within a second and a half of the pace, while the first of the full-factory 499Ps completed the top 10 in Alessandro Pier Guidi’s hands.
Top Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh was the #2 WEC full-season entry run by the Ganassi team with Alex Lynn at the wheel, while the two Alpine A424 LMDhs took 20th and 21st positions in the 23-strong Hypercar class.
Jose Maria Lopez got 10 laps in the #7 car after being brought back into Toyota’s Hypercar line-up following the injuries sustained by former team-mate Mike Conway in a cycling incident, the Argentine lapping almost exactly one second from Kobayashi’s session best.
Kobayashi’s session-topping time was more than a second up on the 3m30.685s with which Ferrari Antonio Fuoco went quickest in the opening session of the pre-race test last year and already a tenth up on the afternoon best of 3m29.504s set by his team-mate, Antonio Giovinazzi.
Track conditions were good from the start of the session.
Cadillac driver Jack Aitken, who went first in the Action Express Racing Caddy so he could return to Zandvoort to take up his DTM seat with the Emil Frey Ferrari squad, stated that it “felt better” than in previous years.
#28 Idec Sport Oreca 07 - Gibson of Paul Lafargue, Job Van Uitert, Reshad De Gerus
Photo by: Marc Fleury
The 16-strong LMP2 class, which is returning to the WEC grid for Le Mans after being axed from the full championship this year, was headed by IDEC Sport.
Job van Uitert posted a 3m37.044s in the French team’s solo ORECA-Gibson 07, which was just over a tenth up on Oliver Jarvis’s 3m37.176s for United Autosports.
Third went to the AO by TF ORECA in which Louis Deletraz got down to 3m37.394s.
The two Auto Sport Promotion Lexus RC F GT3s blocked out the top of the times in the new-for-2024 LMGT3 class.
Kelvin van der Linde led the way on a 4m00.106s, which was just over half a second up on team-mate Esteban Masson in the sister car.
Seal Gelael took third in the best of the two WRT BMW M4 GT3s.
The session as curtailed two minutes early when Lorenzo Fluxa crashed the #37 Cool Racing ORECA-Gibson 07 LMP2 in the Porsche Curves.
#78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus RC F LMGT3 of Arnold Robin, Timur Boguslavskiy, Kelvin Van Der Linde
Photo by: Marc Fleury
It was the second red flag of the three hours after a shot stoppage when Renger van der Zande pulled over on the run from Mulsanne Corner to Indianapolis with a fuel-line issue on the #3 Cadillac.
The safety car was also deployed over the course of the session to familiarise the teams and drivers with the safety car procedure, which has undergone minor changes for 2024.
The second session is due to begin at 15:30 local time.
Source: Autosport