Dumas Sets Wednesday Evening Pace for Glickenhaus

Glickenhaus Racing driver Romain Dumas set the pace in Wednesday evening’s second Free Practice session for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, while Corvette Racing led GTE-Pro.

Dumas reeled off a time of 3:28.900 behind the wheel of the No. 708 Glickenhaus 007 Pipo around 24 minutes into the two-hour session that ran in darkness until midnight.

The Glickenhaus driver ended up 0.264 seconds faster than Kamui Kobayashi in the second-placed No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid.

Kobayashi made an improvement right at the last moment to elevate his No. 7 Toyota ahead of the sister No. 8 car that was driven to its fastest lap of the session by Brendon Hartley.

Hartley went quickest in the early stages with a 3:29.248, with Mike Conway slotting the No. 7 Toyota into second. But a series of improvements from Dumas ultimately put the No. 708 Glickenhaus on top ahead of the two Japanese cars.

Conway improved to a time of 3:29.748 just under 40 minutes of the session, and his car sat in third for much of the remainder until Kobayashi found six more tenths.

Ryan Briscoe placed third in the No. 709 Glickenhaus ahead of Matthieu Vaxiviere in the Alpine A480 Gibson, ranking 2.540 and 3.692 seconds away from Dumas respectively.

Corvette Racing topped GTE-Pro courtesy of Nicky Catsburg’s 3:53.492 effort aboard the No. 63 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R.

The Chevrolet factory team initially ran first and second until Frederic Makowiecki narrowly split the pair with a 3:53.669 in the No. 91 Porsche 911 RSR-19, within the same tenth as Alexander Sims driving the No. 64 Corvette.

The best Ferrari 488 GTE Evo was the privateer Riley Motorsports example in fourth, on a 3:54.019 set by Felipe Fraga.

LMP2 was led by Rene Rast at the wheel of Team WRT’s No. 31 Oreca 07 Gibson, with the German driver producing a 3:33.119 for the Belgian squad.

Rast held sway by two-tenths over second-placed Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 22 United Autosports Oreca, while last year’s GTE-Pro class pole-sitter Dries Vanthoor brought the No. 32 WRT Oreca up to third in class.

There was drama for LMP2 competitor Inter Europol Competition, as the Polish squad’s No. 43 Oreca stopped in front of the pits halfway into the session.

A team spokesperson confirmed that the car developed a broken right-front suspension during Fabio Scherer’s stint.

Some late lap times shaped the higher end of the GTE-Am category as Mikkel O. Pedersen led the way for Team Project 1.

The Danish driver’s 3:55.629 bid in the final five minutes elevated the No. 46 Porsche to the top spot, while Jan Heylen made a similarly-timed improvement to take second for Dempsey-Proton Racing’s No. 88 Porsche entry.

The next 24 Hours of Le Mans track session is FP3 at 3 p.m. CEST (9 a.m. ET) on Thursday.

RESULTS: Free Practice 2