Toyota tops second practice after Kubica Ferrari loses best time

Toyota ended up fastest in second free practice for the Le Mans 24 Hours after the customer AF Corse 499P Le Mans Hypercar lost its best time for pitlane speeding.

Sebastien Buemi sat second in the Free Practice 2 classification for this weekend’s double-points round of the World Endurance Championship until the fastest time set by Robert Kubica was scrubbed out as the chequered flag fell.

Kubica had been a second clear after posting a 3m25.101s, which compared with Buemi’s 3m26.156s aboard the #8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH, before losing all his times for the pitlane infraction.

There was further drama after the chequered flag fell at midnight when the #8 Toyota with Ryo Hirakawa at the wheel had a coming together with the Kessel Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 driven by Casper Stevenson on the exit of the Porsche Curves.

Buemi’s lap set at the start of the two-hour night session gave him a margin of nearly half a second over the #12 Jota Cadillac V-Series.R in second position.

Norman Nato posted a 3m26.607s in the American car in which Alex Lynn had earlier topped the times in opening qualifying.

The yellow AF Corse Ferrari ended up third with a 3m26.680s from Yifei Ye after the deletion of Kubica’s times.

A late improvement from Pascal Wehrlein propelled the best of the factory Porsche 963 LMDhs up to fourth.

His 3m26.748s just shaded Miguel Molina’s 3m26.809s in the #50 factory Ferrari.

Raffaele Marciello vaulted up the order in the closing stages with a sequence of fast laps: he got down to a 3m27.193s aboard the #15 WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh.

That just shaded Michael Christensen’s 3m27.204s in the second Porsche Penske Motorsport entry to take sixth.

Sheldon van der Linde took eighth in the sister BMW with a 3m27.254s set early on in the session.

Earl Bamber was another late improver in the #38 Jota Cadillac with a 3m27.285s to go ninth.

The chequered flag had already fallen when Alessandro Pier Guidi stopped the clock on 3m27.332s to sneak into the top 10 in the second of the factory Ferraris.

The AO by TF ORECA in which Louis Deletraz posted fastest time in first qualifying maintained its position at the head of the LMP2 order with Dane Cameron.

He posted a 3m37.515s to end up more than a second clear of United Autosports driver Pietro Fittipaldi, who had initially led the way with a 3m38.644s.

Third fastest in class went to Tom Blomqvist in the CLX-PureRxcing ORECA, which was less than a tenth further back.

#87 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus RC F LMGT3: Petru Umbrarescu, Jose Maria Lopez, Clemens Schmid

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

Lexus returned to the top of the times in LMGT3 with the Auto Sport Promotion team’s two professional drivers at the wheel.

Jose Maria Lopez and Jack Hawksworth ended up separated by just seven hundredths in the two RC F GT3s.

Lopez’s 3m55.422s gave him a margin of half a second over third-placed Richard Lietz in the best of the Manthey Porsche 911 GT3-Rs.

Only 60 cars took part in the session: the #63 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3 crashed by Stephen Grove in opening practice was still undergoing repairs and the #33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R didn’t run as a result of gearbox issues.

The Le Mans field will return to the track for third free practice at 14:45 on Thursday, with the two Hyperpole rounds of qualifying kicking off at 20:00.

FP3 result: