Porsche leads the way in GTE
Porsche and Ford dominated the timesheets in GTE Pro. There’s nothing new in that. The two manufacturers that led the way at the official pre-season World Endurance Championship test at Paul Ricard in April, and then at the Spa season opener, took the top seven spots at the end of the day.
Patrick Pilet jumped ahead of Gianmaria Bruni at the end of the afternoon as Porsche finished up first and second with one car each from the CORE Autosport IMSA operation and the Manthey-run WEC squad. The Frenchman’s 3m52.551s edged out Le Mans returnee Bruni, driving one of two retro-livery 911 RSRS that Porsche is fielding at Le Mans, by just under a tenth.
Ford had blocked out the top four positions in the morning session, when Andy Priaulx had led the way on a 3m53.008s in one of the British-run WEC entries. That mark still stood as the best by a Ford GT time at the end of the day, though Olivier Pla improved to within 0.05s of his team-mate’s time in the second entry from the Silverstone-based squad.
Best of the rest in eighth position was the MTEK BMW M8 GTE in which Nicky Catsburg posted a 3m53.946s, the better part of a second and a half off the pace on the German manufacturer’s return to Le Mans for the first time since 2011. The fastest Ferrari 488 GTE ‘evo’ and Chevrolet Corvette C7.R were a couple of tenths further back.
Aston Martin was nowhere once again on a day that it lost a chassis when Marco Sorensen crashed heavily at the first kink between Mulsanne and Indianapolis corners. The sister car ended up just under five seconds off the pace.
The Balance of Performance for Le Mans, which is separate from the automatic system used in the rest of the WEC, remains a work in progress. It can change ahead of and even during race week.
Aston Martin Racing was confident that it would. It claimed that its times were pretty much as its simulations had predicted. AMR managing director John Gaw pointed out that the new Aston was competitive through the Porsche Curves, but was missing 10km/h in the speed traps.
“The ACO and the FIA know we are missing top speed, because it’s the same as at Spa,” he said. “They clearly wanted to see it again with the car in Le Mans configuration, so we are confident that there will be a change in time for the race.”