Thiriet by TDS Racing Tops Wet Imola Free Practice 1

The No. 46 Thiriet by TDS Racing Oreca 05 Nissan topped the time charts after Free Practice 1 for tomorrow’s Four Hours of Imola, round two of the European Le Mans Series.

On a wet but drying Imola circuit the No. 41 Greaves Motorsport Gibson 015S Nissan had sat at the top of the timing screens at the end of the session, but it’s fastest time of 1:41.001 was removed as the checkered flew.

That resulted in the No. 46 car of Pierre Thiriet, Ludovic Badey and Tristan Gommendy to take first place, with a fastest lap of 1:41.531.

The No. 41 Greaves car of Jon Lancaster, Gary Hirsch and Bjorn Wirdheim was second fastest, 0.082 seconds behind the Oreca, with the Pegasus Racing Morgan of Leo Roussel, David Cheng and Adderly Fong taking third place.

Making their competition debut at Imola, the two SMP Racing BR01 entries finished seventh and eighth in Free Practice 1.

In LMP3 Team LNT’s Chris Hoy and Charlie Robertson, driving the No. 3 Ginetta-Nissan, beat their teammates Gaetan Paletou and Michael Simpson in the No. 2 car. Third quickest was the Cetilar Villorba Corse car of Giorgio Sernagiotto and Roberto Lacorte, also making its debut at Imola.

The No. 63 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia GT3 of Giorgio Roda, Ilya Melnikov and Marco Cioci beat the GTE cars in the first session. The GTC car was almost two seconds quicker than the fastest GTE car, the No. 56 AT Racing Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi and father and son Talkanitsa.

Red flags interrupted the session twice. SVK by Speed Factory’s Jesus Fuster caused the first red flag and a collision between Mark Patterson in the No. 48 Murphy Prototypes Oreca 03R and the No. 11 Lanan Racing Ginetta of Alex Craven resulted in a second interruption.

Free Practice 2 is set to start at 3 pm local time.

RESULTS: Free Practice 1