Rebellion Quickest Again in Spa Second Practice

Rebellion continued to set the pace in practice for the Total 6 Hours of Spa as Gustavo Menezes put the Swiss team on top of the weekend’s second session on Friday morning.

Menezes’ time of 2:00.878 was half a second quicker than Brendon Hartley in the second-placed Toyota TS050 Hybrid, and 1.5 seconds better than Norman Nato’s effort that set the pace for Rebellion during FP1.

Both Toyotas improved on their times from Thursday’s session, in which the non-hybrid LMP1 cars from Rebellion and ByKolles Racing finished first and second.

Hartley produced a 2:01.438 to lower the No. 8 car’s marker by around 2.3 seconds, while Kamui Kobayashi’s similar 2:01.480 shaved off 2.1 seconds from the No. 7 Toyota’s previous best.

The ByKolles Racing ENSO CLM P1/01 Gibson finished fifth in the overall order on a 2:03.503, behind the best-placed LMP2 car from Signatech Alpine.

Former Toyota reserve Thomas Laurent turned in a time of 2:03.371 which put the Frenchman 2.5 seconds off the overall pace and six-tenths ahead of the next LMP2 car.

This was the Racing Team Nederland Oreca 07 Gibson, which achieved a high spot on the leaderboard courtesy of Job van Uitert but would later be responsible for a brief Full Course Yellow after Frits van Eerd went off at Turn 13.

Paul di Resta placed third for van Uitert’s European Le Mans Series team United Autosports, while Nicolas Lapierre was fourth for Cool Racing.

In GTE-Pro, the pair of factory Aston Martin Vantage GTEs led the way from the Ferrari and Porsche crews.

Maxime Martin went an impressive six-tenths quicker than his AMR teammate Nicki Thiim, while the best non-Aston effort was 1.4 seconds shy of the class pace.

Miguel Molina came through in third behind the wheel of the No. 71 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo, while Kevin Estre finished fourth in the best of the Porsche 911 RSRs.

Team Project 1’s Matteo Cairoli headed the GTE-Am field in FP2 with a time of 2:16.911 aboard the No. 56 Porsche that the Italian shares with Laurents Hoerr and Egidio Perfetti.

AF Corse’s Giancarlo Fisichella and Caioli’s Project 1 teammate Felipe Fraga finished second and third.

A final Free Practice session is due to start at 2 p.m. CEST (8 a.m. EST) ahead of qualifying later in the day for Saturday’s six-hour race.

RESULTS: Free Practice 2