24h Le Mans
Test Day is a rehearsal for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which will be run on 15-16 June this year. Track conditions were excellent and the 62-strong field put the day to good use, testing settings and procedures on site before the race itself. While teams collected hordes of data to analyse before Practice next week, we crunched a few numbers ourselves.
Sébastien Buemi, driver of the Toyota Gazoo Racing #8 Toyota TS050 HYBRID, marked up the fastest lap time. The average speed of 246 kph was slightly slower than Fernando Alonso’s fastest lap of 03:19.066 last year. The #8 was eight-tenths faster than the #7 sister car.
The number of laps completed in the #7 Toyota TS050 HYBRID by the combined efforts of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José Maria Lopez. That’s 1,526.1 kilometres. If we add the laps clocked by its stablemate, that makes a total of 220 laps for Toyota, or 2,997.7 kilometres without the slightest mechanical issue.
Once again, LMGTE Pro promises to be a tight race. The top 11 cars in the class recorded lap times within less than a second of each other. There are four makes in the top five: Chevrolet Corvette, Ford, Ferrari and Porsche.
The top speed, set by Stoffel Vandoorne in SMP Racing’s LMP1 BR Engineering BR1-AER. Top speeds in the other classes:
The highest track temperature recorded yesterday. Ideal for the purposes of the day! The air temperature reached a high of 30.9°C.
The number of rookies who tried the circuit for the first time. There are newcomers in each class:
The circuit will be quiet this week. The next date in the diary is next Sunday and Monday (9 and 10 June) when teams and their cars head to Place de la République in Le Mans city centre for the scrutineering sessions.
PHOTO: LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), CIRCUIT DES 24 HEURES DU MANS, SUNDAY 3 JUNE 2019, TEST DAY. A 62-car field makes for heavy traffic. Multi-class racing is part of the make-up of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
