Campbell Tops First COTA Practice for Porsche

Porsche’s Matt Campbell set the pace in opening practice for this weekend’s Lone Star Le Mans round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at the Circuit of The Americas.

Campbell’s best time of 1:53.574 aboard the No. 5 Penske Porsche 963 came at the very end of the 1 hour 35-minute session, putting him 0.460 seconds clear of the No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P that had topped the leaderboard for most of the way.

Robert Kubica had set the time aboard the No. 83 car, which was good enough for second, 0.017 seconds ahead of the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche driven by Oliver Rasmussen.

Fourth and fifth were the two works Ferraris, the No. 50 car in which Antonio Fuoco set the best time of 1:54.118 leading the sister No. 51 car of Antonio Giovinazzi that made a late leap up the leaderboard with a 1:54.186 effort.

Alex Lynn put the solo Cadillac V-Series.R sixth with a similarly late improvement, ahead of Kevin Estre aboard the championship-leading No. 6 Porsche.

Completing the top ten were the two BMW M Hybrid V8s, Rene Rast in the No. 20 car leading Marco Wittmann in the No. 15, and the best of the Toyota GR010 Hybrids, the No. 7 car in which Nyck de Vries set the fastest time.

Toyota’s No. 8 car was down in 15th place ahead of only the two Peugeot 9X8s and the Proton Competition Porsche, which propped up the 18-car Hypercar class.

Alessio Rovera topped the times in the LMGT3 class with a 2:06.253 in the No. 55 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3.

The two Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3s were up next, with the No. 88 of Dennis Olsen going second-fastest on a 2:06.475 ahead of the No. 77 car in which Ben Barker recorded the best time of 2:06.720.

TF Sport’s pair of Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs completed the top five in class.

The two Manthey-run Porsche 911 GT3 Rs ended the session down in 16th and 18th places following that car’s weight increase under the latest Balance of Performance.

What was originally scheduled to be a 90-minute session was extended by five minutes owing to two disruptions, the first being a red flag that was triggered by a technical issue in race control after five minutes.

That was followed by a full-course yellow period to retrieve the stricken No. 60 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.

Free Practice 2 for the Lone Star Le Mans is due to start at 5.10 p.m. local time (6.10 p.m. EDT).

RESULTS: Free Practice 1