Toyota Gazoo Racing scored a double victory in qualifying for tomorrow’s 6 Hours of Monza, Round 3 of the FIA World Endurance Championship, when the Argentinian Jose Maria Lopez in the Toyota GR010 with the number 7 drove a 1: 35.899 minutes, just 0.062 seconds ahead of the Sister No. 8 car of Brendon Hartley.
The session was led by both No. 708 Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus by Pipo Derani and No. 36 Alpine by Nicolas Lapierre before the Toyotas attacked again. A red flag at the end of the session left only one flying lap for each reaction, the Toyotas chose to stay on the pit lane, their challengers unable to improve their efforts in front of the red flag.
YOU are in qualifying in the fastest car of the day, the hypercar from @TGR_WEC. Here we go! #WEC # 6HMonza #GoHyper pic.twitter.com/UbapL1DXeF
– WEC (@FIAWEC) July 17, 2021
The Alpine third is two tenths behind the Toyotas in front of the number 708, another half a second behind.
In the LMP2, the 20-year-old French driver Charles Milesi gave the WRT team its first WEC pole position. The silver placed driver achieved a time of 1: 38.527 minutes, which replaced the best of a number of remarkable scalps. His pole lap was just good enough to fend off one last breath from United Autosports’ Filipe Albuquerque, the gap between the WRT man and United’s number 22 being just 0.03 seconds. Ben Hanley, former IndyCar man from Dragonspeed USA, finished the session third fastest ahead of Nyck de Vries from Racing Team Nederland.
Toyota sweeps WEC training in Monzaza
Lopez and Toyota stay ahead in WEC training in Monza
Toyota sets the pace at the opening of the Monza training session
The red flag drama led championship-leading team JOTA’s strategy to go catastrophically wrong after the team decided to change the tires on both cars in the middle of the session. Former McLaren F1 driver Stoffel Vandoorne was in a hurry to get some time on the board and lose over the curbs. At the exit of the high-speed Lesmos, No. 28 spins and hits hard on the Tec-Pro Barriers. The Belgian was uninjured, but the car did not set a lap time.
Anthony Davidson managed to dodge the spinning sister car when he too tried to place a flyer, but at least managed to take advantage of the one-time performance at the end of the session to be the sixth fastest time behind debutant # 82 ORECA. to drive from Risi Competizione.
Kevin Estre set the pace for the Porsche GT Team in Monza. Motorsport pictures
In the previous GT session it was a battle royal at the top of both classes.
Kevin Estre took his qualifying lap and put his Porsche Team 911 RSR-19 with the number 92 on the GTE Pro pole with a lap in 1: 45.412 minutes, just 0.065 seconds ahead of Alessandro Pier Guidi’s number 51 AF Corse Ferrari lay. Gianmaria Bruni and Miguel Molina would repeat the Porsche / Ferrari order and complete the class line-up.
In GTE-Am, Ben Keating drove a very spirited session and with one lap in 1: 47.272 minutes in the TF Sport Aston Martin with the starting number 33, it was initially a hotly contested pole position that was finally good enough to defeat a hard attacking Francois Fending off Perrodo in the Ferrari No. 83 AF Corse by around a quarter of a second.
Roberto Lacorte took third place on the grid in the Cetilar Ferrari No. 47, a tenth ahead of Egidio Perfetti’s No. 56 Project 1 Porsche.
RESULTS
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