No. 8 Toyota Sets Prologue Tuesday Evening Pace

Kazuki Nakajima set the pace for Toyota Gazoo Racing in the second session of the FIA World Endurance Championship Prologue which was truncated by a lengthy red flag.

Broken curbing in the second sector put Tuesday evening’s four-hour session hold for an hour and prompted WEC officials to extend the run-time by 30 minutes.

By the end, Nakajima’s time of 1:30.114 at the wheel of the No. 8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid was 0.066 seconds quicker than the second-best effort which came courtesy of Kamui Kobayashi in the sister No. 7 car.

However, the session two leading time fell just short of the fastest lap of the Prologue so far, posted earlier in the day by Conway’s co-driver Jose Maria Lopez.

Rebellion Racing ran third and fourth, with Bruno Senna’s 1:31.073 marker putting the best of the Rebellion R13 Gibsons within a second of the outright pace.

Mathias Beche briefly popped up in third with the No. 5 Ginetta G60-LT-P1 AER, but the Swiss driver’s final-hour time was deleted shortly before the end of the session.

The best Ginetta number was therefore a 1:32.828, putting the British constructor 1.7 seconds away from the table-topping Toyota.

In LMP2, United Autosports led for the second consecutive session through Paul di Resta’s time of 1:33.110.

A flurry of late flying laps altered the shape of the order, with Thomas Laurent jumping up to second with a 1:34.023 aboard the Oreca-based Signatech Alpine A470 Gibson.

Jackie Chan DC Racing and Cool Racing came through in third and fourth, ahead of High Class Racing and Jota.

The GTE-Pro pace was set by the AF Corse Ferrari of Miguel Molina who recorded a 1:43.814 that now stands as the Prologue benchmark for the class so far.

This gave the No. 71 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo an edge of 0.089 seconds over the second-placed No. 92 Porsche 911 RSR, while the sister No. 91 Porsche placed third.

Team Project 1 ran first and second in the GTE-Am class with Matteo Cairoli setting the class pace ahead of Joerg Bergmeister.

Despite a late improvement from Bergmeister in the No. 56 Porsche, Cairoli’s time of 1:44.843 aboard the No. 57 machine was three-hundredths of a second faster.

Bergmeister caused a Full Course Yellow period when he left the track at Turn 1 on his out lap, but returned to climb up the order later in the session.

RESULTS: Session 2