Bourdais Leads Opening Practice for Petit Le Mans

Sebastien Bourdais led a red flag-affected opening practice session for the 26th Motul Petit Le Mans with a late improvement in the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R.

The Frenchman produced a time of 1:11.674 with two minutes left in the 90-minute run, eclipsing Porsche Penske Motorsport driver Mathieu Jaminet by 0.046 seconds.

Jaminet surged the No. 6 Porsche 963 to the top of the GTP leaderboard with eight minutes to go, shortly after the Penske mechanics fitted a new rear wing after an incident that caused the second of two red flag stoppages.

During Laurens Vanthoor’s stint, part of the Porsche’s original wing came off after being hit by the Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier JS P320 Nissan of Jonathan Woolridge at Turn 3.

An earlier red flag was called half an hour into proceedings when Antonio Fuoco crashed the Cetilar Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 at the exit of Turn 1.

The Ferrari Hypercar driver had just set Cetilar’s fastest lap of the session when he slid through the grass and into the barrier, resulting in rear-end damage to the car.

Before that interruption, a block of five LMP2 cars led the way overall as the LMDh prototypes in GTP found their feet around Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

Connor De Phillippi returned GTP to the outright top spot shortly after the resumption of running with a 1:13.597 in the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8.

The American driver remained quickest until shortly after the second red flag, when Tom Blomqvist steered the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 to a 1:12.521 with 16 minutes left on the clock.

Blomqvist was then beaten by several drivers who made late improvements, with Bourdais ending up beating Jaminet and Matt Campbell in the factory Porsches.

Jack Aitken was fourth for the Action Express Racing Cadillac squad, ahead of BMW driver Marco Wittmann and earlier pace-setter Blomqvist.

Jules Gounon was the fastest driver in GTD Pro courtesy of a 1:20.279 effort behind the wheel of WeatherTech Racing’s Proton Competiton-run Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

Gounon finished just 0.011 seconds ahead of GTD leader Bill Auberlen driving for BMW squad Turner Motorsport.

Ben Hanley set the pace in LMP2 with a time of 1:13.919 in the No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR Oreca 07 Gibson, while Garett Grist led LMP3 for Jr III Racing.

RESULTS: Practice 1