Mark Webber’s No. 1 Porsche 919 Hybrid posted the fastest time in practice for the Six Hours of Nürburgring on Friday, as Romain Dumas crashed the sister No. 2 car at Turn 1 following a front left brake disc failure.
Webber reeled off a lap time of 1:40.997 roughly 20 minutes into the second practice session, improving on Marc Lieb’s time from this morning by more than seven-tenths.
Audi and Porsche were closely matched, with the No. 7 and No. 8 Audi R18s following only 0.014 and 0.139 seconds behind, while Toyota was almost a second back in fourth and fifth.
Porsche lost a considerable amount of track time with the technical failure on the No. 2 entry in FP2. The car sustained front end damage in the incident and didn’t return to action.
Times across the board were quicker in Friday’s 90-minute afternoon session.
Rene Rast put the No. 26 G-Drive Racing Oreca 05 Nissan on top in LMP2 with a late flyer in FP2, and was more than 1 second clear of the Strakka Racing Gibson 015S Nissan that led the timing screens for most of the session.
GTE-Pro saw the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE and No. 97 Aston Martin Vantage V8 swap positions compared to FP1, with the latter leading the field with a 1:56.908 put in by Richie Stanaway.
The championship-leading No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari F458 Italia was quickest in GTE-Am, ahead of the Larbre Competition Corvette C7.R.
Some rain was reported on track about halfway through the session, although it didn’t seem to affect the lap times.
Free Practice 3 is on tap for 9:15 a.m. local time.
RESULTS: Free Practice 2