Silverstone WEC: Hartley flyer displays Porsche’s true pace
Porsche’s Brendon Hartley dipped under last year’s pole time in second practice for the Silverstone WEC opener, but it wasn’t all good news for the German marque as the sister car suffered a brief off.
Photo by: Porsche AG
Despite a few drops of rain beforehand, the session started dry with the track soon inundated with cars as the skies were threatening with dark rain clouds.
Hartley was quickly into his groove, a 1m39.655s already under the 2015 pole time. His co-driver Mark Webber set a faster sector-three time later in the session but didn’t improve the time overall.
In the #2 car, Romain Dumas was warned about abusing track limits at Copse, recording the second-quickest time of 1m41.344s, some 1.6s off the Kiwi Hartley’s pace.
Then Marc Lieb suffered an off in the #2 car at Luffield, beaching the car in the gravel, which brought out a full course yellow.
In the battle for best of the rest, Loic Duval set the fastest first sector overall for Audi, on his way to a 1m41.454s, 1.799s off the pace – but only a tenth off the #2 Porsche.
That lap pushed back the Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi to fourth on 1m41.915s.
A rain shower five minutes before the end curtailed the quick times, with the Audi-Toyota symmetry repeated in positions five and six by the sister #7 Audi and #5 Toyota.
Rebellion led the way in the non-hybrid subclass over the ByKolles CLM.
Multi-team duel in LMP2
In LMP2, Pipo Dirani set the early pace for ESM on a 1m50.194s, already quicker than the class’s fastest morning time on his first run.
Gustavo Menezes took the top spot from him with a lap of 1m49.757s in the Signatech Alpine, but a flurry of late times in the final 30 minutes changed everything.
After ex-F1 racer Roberto Merhi went P2 with 1m49.994s for sportscar newcomers Manor, James Jakes then hit the front with a 1m49.696s in the sister car.
But Strakka Racing had the last laugh, as Jonny Kane set 1m49.632s to top the class in his Nissan-powered Gibson.
Ferrari rules the roost in GTE Pro
In GTE Pro, there was battle royal between the two AF Corse Ferrari 488s of Davide Rigon/Sam Bird and Gianmaria Bruni/James Calado.
Rigon set the ball rolling with a time of 2m01.917s, which was then topped by Bruni on 2m01.494s despite a warning for track limits.
Rigon closed the gap with 2m01.569s, and then took P1 on 2m01.069s.
Calado fought back with a 2m00.107s – almost a second clear of the sister car, before Rigon improved to a 2m00.313s, two tenths off, with Bird trimming off a few fractions on a 2m00.306s.
In GTE Am, the Gulf Racing Porsche led the way – although it suffered an off late in the session.
Silverstone FP2 times
Pos | Driver | Car | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Mark Webber Brendon Hartley Timo Bernhard |
Porsche 919 Hybrid '16 | 1:39.655 | 1:39.655 |
2 | Marc Lieb Romain Dumas Neel Jani |
Porsche 919 Hybrid '16 | 1:41.344 | +1.689 |
3 | Loic Duval Oliver Jarvis Lucas di Grassi |
Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro '16 | 1:41.454 | +1.799 |
4 | Kamui Kobayashi Mike Conway Stéphane Sarrazin |
Toyota TS050 HYBRID | 1:41.523 | +1.868 |
5 | Andre Lotterer Benoit Tréluyer Marcel Fassler |
Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro '16 | 1:41.678 | +2.023 |
6 | Anthony Davidson Kazuki Nakajima Sébastien Buemi |
Toyota TS050 HYBRID | 1:42.963 | +3.308 |
7 | Alexandre Imperatori Mathéo Tuscher Dominik Kraihamer |
Rebellion R-One | 1:46.428 | +6.773 |
8 | Nelson Piquet Jr. Nick Heidfeld Nicolas Prost |
Rebellion R-One | 1:47.685 | +8.030 |
9 | James Rossiter Oliver Webb Simon Trummer |
CLM P1/01 | 1:48.590 | +8.935 |
10 | Jonny Kane Nick Leventis Danny Watts |
Gibson 015S | 1:49.632 | +9.977 |
11 | Tor Graves Will Stevens James Jakes |
ORECA 05 | 1:49.696 | +10.041 |
12 | Nicolas Lapierre Gustavo Menezes Stéphane Richelmi |
Alpine A460 | 1:49.757 | +10.102 |
13 | Roberto Merhi Matt Rao Richard Bradley |
ORECA 05 | 1:49.994 | +10.339 |
14 | Ryan Dalziel Pipo Derani Chris Cumming |
Ligier JS P2 | 1:50.026 | +10.371 |
15 | Roman Rusinov René Rast Nathanael Berthon |
ORECA 05 | 1:50.268 | +10.613 |
16 | Ricardo Gonzalez Filipe Albuquerque Bruno Senna |
Ligier JS P2 | 1:50.712 | +11.057 |
17 | Vitaly Petrov Kirill Ladygin Viktor Shaytar |
BR Engineering BR01 | 1:51.946 | +12.291 |
18 | Scott Sharp Ed Brown Johannes van Overbeek |
Ligier JS P2 | 1:52.082 | +12.427 |
19 | Nelson Panciatici Ho-Pin Tung David Cheng |
Alpine A460 | 1:52.305 | +12.650 |
20 | Nicolas Minassian Maurizio Mediani |
BR Engineering BR01 | 1:52.680 | +13.025 |
21 | Gianmaria Bruni James Calado |
Ferrari 488 GTE | 2:00.107 | +20.452 |
22 | Davide Rigon Sam Bird |
Ferrari 488 GTE | 2:00.306 | +20.651 |
23 | Richard Lietz Michael E. Christensen |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:01.314 | +21.659 |
24 | Mike Wainwright Adam Carroll Ben Barker |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:02.081 | +22.426 |
25 | Richie Stanaway Fernando Rees |
Aston Martin Vantage V8 | 2:02.525 | +22.870 |
26 | Billy Johnson Olivier Pla Stefan Mücke |
Ford GT '16 | 2:02.775 | +23.120 |
27 | Pedro Lamy Paul Dalla Lana Mathias Lauda |
Aston Martin Vantage V8 | 2:02.788 | +23.133 |
28 | Paolo Ruberti Yutaka Yamagishi Pierre Ragues |
Chevrolet Corvette C7 GT3 | 2:02.911 | +23.256 |
29 | Khaled Al Qubaisi David Heinemeier Hansson Klaus Bachler |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:03.005 | +23.350 |
30 | Andy Priaulx Marino Franchitti Harry Tincknell |
Ford GT '16 | 2:03.075 | +23.420 |
31 | Emmanuel Collard Rui Aguas François Perrodo |
Ferrari F458 Italia | 2:03.229 | +23.574 |
32 | Nicki Thiim Marco Sørensen Darren Turner |
Aston Martin Vantage V8 | 2:03.253 | +23.598 |
33 | Christian Ried Joël Camathias Wolf Henzler |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:03.392 | +23.737 |
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