24h Le Mans
The traditional Test Day for the 24 Hours of Le Mans was fully dominated by the Toyota TS050 Hybrids.
Test Day has come to an end for the 62 competitors entered in the 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans. After eight hours of track time, the Toyotas have once again confirmed their superiority. The fastest in the field, they were also the hardest working, completing more than 100 laps. In LMP1, the DragonSpeed team did the least amount of laps (29), mainly due to shock absorber troubles that caused the #10 BR Engineering BR1 to start the day no earlier than the last hour of the morning session. Trailing the #8 and #7 Toyota TS050s are Rebellion Racing and SMP Racing's cars, nearly two seconds from the Japanese prototypes. André Lotterer clocked 3:21.323 at the end of the day (#1 Rebellion R13).
The day was interrupted by a few trajectory deviations and incidents, provoking Slow Zones and deployment of the safety cars. At 11:27, Paul-Loup Chatin (IDEC SPORT Racing's #48 ORECA) left the track at Indianapolis, straight into a stack of tyres. Shortly before 17:00, High Class Racing's #20 ORECA 07-Gibson driven by Dennis Andersen had an incident at the Porsche curve. As the safety barrier had been damaged, it was necessary for Automobile Club de l’Ouest technical services to make repairs under the watch of the safety cars.
In the other categories, the timesheets changed throughout the day. In the end at 18:00, Jackie Chan DC Racing's #32 ORECA 07 (LMP2), the #63 Corvette C7.R (LMGTE Pro) and the #62 Ferrari 488 GTE (LMGTE Am) scored the fastest times in their respective categories.
2019 24 Hours of Le Mans TEST DAY classification
PHOTO: LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), CIRCUIT DES 24 HEURES DU MANS, TEST DAY 2019. No surprise, the Toyota TS050s ended up exactly as expected, on top.
