American Le Mans Series

Peugeot tops time sheets in final Sebring practice

© American Le Mans Series

The final official practice session of the Sebring weekend took place this morning and it was the #07 Team Peugeot Total car that ended the session on top of the timing sheets. The Minassian/Sarrazin/Lamy driven Peugeot 908 was 0.259s quicker than the #1 Audi R10 of McNish/Capello/Kristensen.

Only 23 cars took part in the practice session, with the other cars staying in the paddock area with teams preparing their cars for the 12 Hour race, repairing cars after shunts during yesterday’s sessions or even packing their stuff. The latest withdrawal is the Corsa Motorsports Ferrari 430 GT2. During the weekend the team struggled to find the pace and after already deciding to skip qualifying the announcement came today that Corsa and tyre supplier Hankook had decided to call it a day.

In the session itself Tom Kristensen went off-road with the R10, throwing up the dust and damaging the undertray of the Audi. He slowly returned to the pit and immediately disappeared behind the wall to hand the car over to the Audi engineers.

At the end of the one hour long session it was Peugeot leading the way, with the #1 Audi close behind. Only six tenths of a second behind the Peugeot was the #6 Team Penske Porsche RS Spyder of Maassen/Long/Briscoe in third overall and fastest in LMP2 (1:44.581). Third in LMP1 was the #2 Audi R10, although this car was 2.183 seconds slower than the Peugeot.

Second in LMP2 was the #7 Penske Porsche, 0.597s behind its sister car. The two Penske Porsche RS Spyders held a big lead over the other LMP2 cars this session as the third LMP2 car, the Lowe’s Fernandez Racing Acura ARX-01B was over a second behind the two Penskes.

In the GT categories the Corvettes took another expected 1-2 in the GT1 class, this time with the #4 Corvette leading the #3 by four tenths of a second. The Bell Motorsports DBR9 was almost two seconds slower. Tafel Racing took the GT2 honors this time, the #71 of Müller/Farnbacher/Bell stopped the clocks at 2:01.728. Second fastest was the pole sitting #62 Risi Ferrari 430 GT, at 0.126s of the Tafel Racing car. Third fastest was the #87 Farnbacher Loles Racing Porsche, half a second behind the Risi Ferrari.

Tomorrow morning all teams will have the final chance to make some adjustments to their car during the warm-up and just after 15:00 CET the start of the 56th Sebring 12 Hours will be given.