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In a major surprise, the No. 708 Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG007 led today’s Le Mans test day after an exceptional lap late in the day by Olivier Pla. The two heavily favored Toyota GR010s both set a best time within 2/10ths of a second of the leader, while Alpine’s lone grandfathered-in 2020 LMP1 car was just under one second behind the Glickenhaus car in fourth.
It is a very encouraging sign for both Glickenhaus and Alpine, who have been beaten handily by Toyota in all three of the races run with Hypercar rules. While neither is anywhere near the scale of the Peugeot factory entry joining the grid next year, both Glickenhaus and Alpine have purpose-built cars (one for the new set of rules, one for the old set) designed just for this race by qualified professionals. If they have pace to compete with Toyota, there is still some hope that they actually can compete with Toyota.
The discouraging news for the two smaller factories is that Toyota showed a serious lack of pace in practice before those races, too. Until the race is a few stints in and the Toyotas are not out front, the GR010s will be heavily favored to win overall. Even if the pace advantage Toyota showed throughout the first few FIA World Endurance Championship rounds is gone at Le Mans, their hybrid setup gives them a range advantage over both cars and their significant budget gives them an implied reliability advantage over the brand new SCG-built Hypercar. The Toyotas should be dethroned in when more factories join the series in the next couple of years, but anything but a win for the GR010 will be one of the bigger upsets in the history of the race.
Porsches finished 1-2-3 in GTE-Pro, where all but one entry were predictably on the same second. Notably, Corvette Racing’s two battle-tested C8.Rs finished last in class in the test session. It is an inauspicious sign for that car’s Le Mans debut, but a year and a half of IMSA running has proven that the C8.R is more than competitive with both Porsche and Ferrari’s older cars.
The No. 48 IDEC Sport entry led the contenders in LMP2, while the No. 99 Proton Competition Porsche led in GTE-Am.
Official practice for Le Mans opens later this week, followed by qualifying. The race itself goes green at its traditional time on Saturday, albeit two months later than its traditional date.
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