While official testing participants of the FIA World Endurance Championship are preparing to get back on track at Le Castellet, we look back at the first day yesterday that was dominated by the Rebellion Racing LMP1, but lap times were close in each class.

LM P1: Neel Jani and Rebellion at the forefront - Private team title holders of 2012, as well as the top finishing private team at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the World Championship, the Anglo-Swiss team and the Lola-Toyota coupe (No.12) have continued to build on their third place in the 12 Hours of Sebring two weeks ago. But the gap remains tight with the new Honda HPD ARX-03c of Strakka and stabilized at a half-second in the afternoon and night sessions. Note that the absence of Audi and Toyota at Le Castellet is due to a matter of planning: both had planned their own sessions before the confirmation of the dates of the official test at Le Castellet.

LM P2: a closely matched timesheet - Three different teams have finished top of the timesheets in three sessions : the Oreca-Nissan of G-Drive Racing in the morning, the ADR-Delta in the afternoon, and Morgan-Nissan No.24 of OAK Racing at the end of the evening session. But these last two did not equal the performance achieved by G-Drive in the morning.

LM GTE classes: Matt Griffin overturns the order - In LM GTE Pro, the duel was between Ferrari and the Porsche factory team of Olaf Manthey. The best Porsche performance of the day was the 911 of Bergmeister Bernhard Pilet, but it trailed the fastest time of the day set by the Ferrari 458 Italia AF Corse entered in ... LM GTE Am, with a superb time by Matt Griffin.

In the video above competitors at the official testing on the Circuit Paul Ricard HTTT Le Castellet.

For more clips go to www.lemans-tv.com. 

Jean-Philippe Doret - ACO