The Grand Prix of Endurance is back, the City of Le Mans preparing to become motorsport’s ultimate battleground for the 94th time. Having defeated the defacto Kings of Le Mans and banished Porsche to the USA, Ferrari seek a fourth consecutive crown for the first time since 1964. Yet with the field having closed the performance gap and arriving hungrier than ever, it will be no easy task for the Scuderia – but it never has. Who will emerge from the Porsche curves at 4.00pm on Sunday? It’s time for the oldest endurance test of them all to begin…

Hypercar

After failing to reach Hyperpole, the #83 Ferrari 499P set the second fastest time in the first night running of the week as Toyota go top of the timing sheets for the first time with the new TR010.

Ye Yefei set the early timings alight in the #83 early on with a 3.26.316 that wouldn’t be beaten until Kamui Kobayashi bested him by 0.200sec on the very last lap of the #8’s session, both manufacturers showing a level of pace we hadn’t seen previously at this event, despite an earlier trip to the gravel trap for the #8 that nearly saw it beached.

Cadillac were third with the #101 that’s been at the sharp end of the pack all day, while Ferdinand Habsburg repeated his heroics in qualifying to put the #36 Alpine fourth ahead of the sister #12 JOTA run Cadillac.

Incredibly Genesis also were in the mix despite being dwarfed in Le Mans experience by the rest of the Hypercar field, as the #19 went sixth fastest in the hands of Matheiu Jamient despite a late puncture with the #7 Toyota directly behind in seventh despite a spin for Nyck De Vries that lost the crew a few minutes for minor repairs at the start.

As in qualifying Aston Martin had at one point gone fastest with Tom Gamble in the #007, with a late charge from Harry Tincknell being good enough for eighth overall, just pipping the BMW pairing, #20 ahead of #15, who rounded out the top 10.

Once again the works Ferraris and Peugeots both failed to breach the top ten by the end of the session, with the Rossa Corsa cars scored in eleventh for the #50, while the sister #51 was down in a lowly sixteenth. The best placed Peugeot was that of Stoffel Vandoorne’s #94 in fifteenth.

LMP2

Forestier Racing by Panis topped the LMP2 timing sheets thanks to a spirited lap from Esteban Masson, his best time a 3.33.645 in the #29 entry ahead of the leading Pro/Am #4 of Crowdstrike, with Laurin Heinrich trailing by 1.3sec in second place.

Third was another Pro/Am car, Mathieu Vaxiviere’s #183 AF Corsa which was still 2.1sec off Masson’s time, with defending class winners Inter Europol and Nick Yelloly fourth in the #43 machine while a difficult Wednesday ended with optimism for the #9 Proton crew, with Harry King’s pace good enough for fifth.

Sixth was Le Mans rookie Valerio Rinicella for IDEC Sport’s #28 entry, while seventh went to the #30 of Duqueine and Julien Andlauer, the crew’s efforts hampered after a spin early on.

LMGT3

Augusto Farfus produced the quickest lap of all in LMGT3, with his 3.55.132 strong enough to eclipse the rest of the field by 0.3sec, ahead of Rui Andrade’s #62 Team Qatar by Iron Lynx entry.

Porsche haven’t shown much throughout Wednesday, but Richard Leitz showed good enough speed for third by the session’s end, as Le Mans rookie Marvin Kirchofer secured fourth for Garage 59’s #10 McLaren.

The best of the Ferraris were Kessel Racing’s #74 entry of Simon Mann, who was fifth ahead of the leading Aston Martin Vantage, Eduardo Barichello placing the team sixth. Porsche’s second car, the #92 of Ayhancan Guven was seventh, with Lexus and Mercedes completing the top ten.

Notably, Ford failed to finish inside the top 20, with the #88 of Logan Sargeant a measly 21st ahead of the sister #88.

image credit: T GOUREAU, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons