American Le Mans Series

Sebring 12H – Thursday Night Practice Report

© Planetlemans – Marcel ten Caat // The Genoa Racing Oreca FLM09 of JR Hildebrand

After the red flags and incidents in the previous sessions during the week the American Le Mans Series night practice on Thursday evening started quite uneventful, but eventually two red flags interrupted the session again.

At 7.15 pm the track openened for the teams taking part in the night session. The #75 RSR Jaguar stayed in the paddock, the mechanics working hard to change the engine after its mishap in the second free practice in the afternoon.

The top teams were out immediately and while the sun was rapidly setting and the photographers lined up in Turn 1 for the ultimate Sebring shot, the times slowly started to drop.

After an initial fastest lap by Adrian Fernandez the Peugeot drivers started setting fast laps. On his 18th lap Davidson posted a 1:45.494, which was enough to get ahead of Pedro Lamy by just over three tenths of a second.

Fifty-five minutes into the session the red flag was shown when the #89 Intersport Racing Oreca FLM09 of David Ducote stalled on its outlap. Six minutes later the track status returned to green and moments later the headlights could be seen again all around the track.

Behind the two Peugeots and the Lola Aston it was the Team CytoSport Porsche RS Spyder in fourth place. Klaus Graf improved the team’s best lap time on the team’s 25th lap of the evening, 5.5 seconds from the leading Peugeot, but 1.3s ahead of nearest rival Patrón Highcroft Racing.

With just over half an hour to go the top three remained the same. Down the field the two BMW E92 M3s were lapping the circuit fast. Dirk Müller lapped the track in 2:01.979, which was over half a second quicker than his teammates in the #92 BMW.
The Extreme Speed Motorsports Ferrari F430 GT2 was third fastest.

Jan Magnussen had just posted a fast lap that put him in fifth when he hit the wall at Turn 13. The #3 Corvette ZR1 was able to continue to and returned to the pit lane – albeit with a damaged rear wing.

Seven minutes later the session got underway once again and soon after the track was packed with cars again. With 15 minutes remaining Jonny Cocker put the Drayson Racing Lola B09/60 Judd in fourth place, the young Briton posting a 1:49.888, pushing the CytoSport Porsche down to fifth. Four minutes later the Porsche dropped to sixth when David Brabham went 0.033s quicker than Graf.

Brabham kept going and went even quicker, beating the lap time set by Jonny Cocker and moving the HPD ARX-01c into fourth overall with just under ten minutes left on the clock.

Behind the LMP1 and LMP2 cars it was JR Hildebrand who had put the Genoa Racing FLM09 in first place in the LMPC class, 0.078s quicker than fellow American Ryan Hunter-Reay. Leh Keen was quickest in the GTC class.

At 9.00 pm the checkered flag came out…ending the Thursday at Sebring.