Austin WEC: Audi stays on top in COTA night practice
Audi remained at the top of the FIA World Endurance Championship practice times as night descended at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas.
In far cooler evening conditions – in which the majority of Saturday’s 6 Hours of COTA will be run – compared to the heat of the Texas afternoon of FP1, times tumbled by over 1.2s.
Andre Lotterer set the early pace in the #7 Audi R18 with a 1m47.330s, which was fractionally trumped by Loic Duval in the #8 sister car on 1m47.235s – just under a tenth faster.
Benoit Treluyer suffered a problem in the #7 car, which toured slowly back to the pits after slowing drastically on the back straight. That stranded the car in the pits for the rest of the session.
It was a quiet session from Porsche, who didn’t seem interested in chasing any headline laptimes. The #1 car was almost a quarter of a second off the Audis’ pace, with the #2 not far behind.
Toyota were fifth and sixth again, the #5 ahead of the #6 after a late quick lap from Sebastien Buemi which got to within 0.9s of the fastest time overall.
In the LMP1-L class, the ByKolles CLM was just 0.3s quicker than the Rebellion.
In LMP2, the #36 Signatech Alpine of Gustavo Menezes, Nicolas Lapierre and Stephane Richelmi led the way from the #43 Mexico City-winning RGR Sport by Morand Ligier. The usual class pacesetter, the #26 G-Drive Oreca, was third.
Ford headed GTE Pro on home turf once more, the #66 GT of Olivier Pla/Stefan Mucke heading the #95 Aston and the #67 Ford.
In GTE Am, the #98 Aston of Paul Dalla Lana, Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda dominated.
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