American Le Mans Series

Sebring 12H – Friday Morning Practice Report

The American Le Mans Series started their Friday with a one-hour long free practice session. Unfortunately for teams and fans the track time during the session was cut short due to two rather long red flag periods. But in the end nothing changed and Peugeot was 1-2 again.

With the session just a minute underway Marino Franchitti tried to overtake one of the Corvettes but things went wrong. On cold tyres the Scot spun the Patrón Highcroft Racing car, fortunately missing everyone. Franchitti kept his car on the track and after getting the noise pointing in the right direction he rejoined the session.

Just minutes later two LMPC Oreca FLM09 cars went off at Turn 12. The Level 5 Motorsports car was able to continue under its own power, but the #11 Primetime-Braille Battery Race Group was not. The red flag was shown and a flatbed transporter went out to recover the stranded car.

Fifteen minutes later the session was restarted and the cars returned to the track, including the Jaguar XKR that missed night practice due to an engine being changed.

Alexander Wurz was the first to complete a fast lap after the red flag had come to an end and the Austrian posted a 1:46.923. Teammate Nic Minassian was a second slower on his first flying lap, but the French driver was in traffic. From that moment the teams started to drop.

With 30 minutes left on the clock Wurz had improved to 1:45.722, Minassian was lapping on the same pace, setting a 1:45.735. Third quickest was Franchitti at 1.319s from Wurz.
Andy Wallace (Genoa Racing #36) was quickest in LMPC, with Van Overbeek setting the fastest time in the Extreme Speed Motorsports Ferrari F430 GT2, ahead of the two Corvettes and the #90 BMW E92 M3.

Paul Drayson then had an off coming out of Turn 5, causing another red flag. The Drayson Racing team owner/driver lost control of the Lola B09/60 Judd and hit the wall, ripping off the rear wing and causing substantial damage to the rear end bodywork. The #45 Flying Lizards Motorsport Porsche managed to brake hard and avoided collecting the Lola as it bounced back on the track.

Drayson restarted the damaged car and drove it back to the pit lane as the safety team started to clean the track and replace the tyre barrier on the outside of turn 5.

With eighteen minutes remaining the session was restarted once more and again the cars rolled out of the pit lane.

The battle in the LMPC class heated up again in the final minutes of the session. Ryan Hunter-Reay, driving the #95 Level 5 Motorsports Oreca FLM09, set the fastest lap time of the LMPC class with only ten minutes to go and improved his own time in the lap after. Christophe Bouchut was also improving and closed in, eventually posting the fastest lap of the class on his 13th lap.

In GT2 Bill Auberlen restored the order in GT2. In only his third lap Auberlen set the fastest class time, 0.550s quicker than Müller. Jaime Melo managed to squeeze the Risi Competizione Ferrari in between with 3 minutes left on the clock and eventually posted a 2:00.914, bringing him to the top of the GT2 class. His time was also the first sub 2:01 lap at Sebring in practice this year (thanks Don Pierce for letting us know).

One minute before the end of the session Harold Primat spun off the track coming out of turn 16. But he stayed clear off the wall.