2021 Le Mans 24 Hours | Incident aplenty as Alpine fastest, Toyota crash

Alpine dodges drama, yellow flags and red flags to emerge quickest in the final free practice session before 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours Hyperpole
Alpine A480 - Nicolas Lapierre, Andre Negrao, Matthieu Vaxiviere [credit: Andrew Hartley]
Alpine A480 - Nicolas Lapierre, Andre Negrao, Matthieu Vaxiviere [credit: Andrew Hartley]

168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Fu🅰ll Le Mans 24 🏅Hours - Free Practice Results [3]

N꧋icolas Lapierre hauled Alpine to the top of the timesheets for the 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours ahead of Toyota in the final free practice session before this evening’s Hyperpole session.

The ‘grandfathered’ Alpine A480 - so-called because it is adapted from an LMP2 chassis to meet Hypercar regulations - has represente🍬d an interesting threat to favourites Toyota throughout preparations for the round-the-clock classic, with its proven reliability and impressive performance th𒊎rough corners.

And so it proved again in FP3, Lapierre dodging the various yellow🧸 flags and two red flag periods - not to mention an off at Indianapolis in which 𝓀he avoided damage - to take the French machine he will share with Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andre Negrao to the top spot.

However, there remains a sಞense Toyota are the favourites heading into the Hyperpole session later 

tonight with Jose Mar♉ia Lopez ꦯin the #7 GR010 Hybrid en route for the top spot before being slowed by yellow flags.

One those came courtesy of the sister #8 Toyota when Kazuki Nakajima dropped the Hypercar at Indianapolis and damaged the rear-end of his car, though he was able to recover it back to the pit-lane for re꧅pairs.

Glickenhaus face a nervy couple of days ahead of the race after both cars began to suffer gremlins, necessitating engine changes that kept them in the pit lane until the final hour. The #708 car driven by Olivier Pla ended the session fourth, but the #709𒉰 car was well down the order after seemingly hitting more problems towards the conclusion of the session.

Two red flags for similar incide🌱nts at different times brought a halt to track action after Derrick Merriman crashed  his IDEC Sport at the Dunlop chicane, which was then followed by a similar incident for the DragonSpeed car driven by J🅘uan Pablo Montoya.

It is the second big rebuild for the IDEC team after the #48 car also crashed heavily in🐻 Qualifying, while DragonSpeed were also in the wall late on in FP2.

In LMP2, Jota continued to look strong w🎐ith the fattest time set in the final minutes courtesy of Antonio Felix da C🧔osta, pushing aside Fabio Scherer and Paul di Resta in the sister United Autosports cars. 

Panis Racing and Team WRT - helmed by James Allen and Robin Frijns respectively - co⭕mpleted the top five in class.

In GTE Pro, Kevin Estre was quickest once again for Porsche, ahead of the privateer WeatherTech 911 of Earl Bamber, while⛦ Richard Leitz ensured a 1-2-3 for t✃he German manufacturer.

Porsche dominated th🐼e GTE Am class too with Julien Andlauer quicker for the Dempseyღ-Proton team, ahead of the sister Project 1 car of Matteo Cairoli.

 

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