Nick de Vries joins Buemi as standouts in the Prologue to Saturday’s six-hour race.
SPA-FRANCHOCHAMPS, Belgium—Following a day of electrical and gearbox troubles on one of their two cars, on Tuesday the Toyota Gazoo Racing team’s Sebastian Buemi topped the final day of the WEC prologue ahead of Monday’s overall winner Filipe Albuquerque of United Autosports. The margin was two-tenths of a second with only 30 minutes to go in the final session.
Buemi completed a 2:04:669 for the day, which also was the fastest time for the hypercar class. However, overall winning went to the LMP 2 entry of Toyota reserve driver Nick de Vries, piloting a G-Drive car, which clocked a 2:04:168 to have the outright best time the Prologue and of the LMP 2 division.
For Toyota’s main rival, French unit Alpine, only Matthieu Vaxiviere placed the highest of that non-hybrid Hypercar and was six-tenths of a second off Toyota’s pace finished third overall.
As for the GTE Pro class, Porsche’s Richard Lietz led the final session in his 911 RSR-19 with a final time of 2:14:244. He beat out the second and third place Ferraris. James Calado’s 488 GTE Evo was a tenth slower than Lietz and just finished ahead of the sister AF Corse Ferrari driven by Miguel Molina. Porsche’s second GTE Pro car, driven by second driver Neel Jani, was fourth. Jani finished just ahead of the Chevrolet Corvette C8.R, entered from the Pratt and Miller Factory Team, and piloted by Antonio Garcia and Olivier Gavin.
The TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage car piloted by Dylan Pereria clocked a 2:14:969 fast time to lead the GTE am class. Pereria narrowly beat the Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche of Matt Campbell. Finishing third was Team Project 1 Porsche, which was ahead of a train of Ferrari’s that placed fourth thru seventh in the division.
The all-female Iron Lynx Ferrari and the LMP 2 Nederland Oreca entries decided not to participate in the afternoon session in response to damage sustained in the morning.
With most of the testing done, the LMP 2 class might be a challenge for the Hypercars in the six-hour race here on Saturday. The LMP2 cars placed fifth thru 16 in this week’s prologue test. If sustained, that could make for an exciting season.
