Conway leads Silverstone FP1, Senna crashes Rebellion
Mike Conway propelled the #7 Toyota to the top of the timesheet in FP1 for the World Endurance Championship’s Six Hours of Silverstone, while Bruno Senna crashed his Rebellion R-13.
The #8 Toyota in the hands of Sebastien Buemi had topped the session after the opening runs, ahead of the sister #7 car.
The 90-minute session was red flagged within the first 30 minutes after Senna lost control of the #1 Rebellion-Gibson R-13 at the exit of Copse corner. He ploughed into the barriers, heavily damaging both the front and rear of his car. Senna was able to get out of the car unaided but was taken to the medical centre for checks.
The subsequent barrier repairs resulted in the red flag period being prolonged. The session was suspended for around 25 minutes and race direction compensated the teams by adding an additional 15 minutes to the end of the session.
Shortly after the resumption, Conway posted a 1m42.145s benchmark in the #7 TS050 HYBRID eclipsing Buemi’s earlier table-topping effort by 0.275s.
The #8 car remained in second place for the rest of the session, ensuring a Toyota one-two at the top of the timesheet.
The Rebellion Racing cars ended up third and fourth, with Gustavo Menezes in the #3 car third and 1.027s behind Conway’s time.
Despite only completing four laps before the crash, the #1 Rebellion’s session best was still fast enough to edge the SMP Racing entries.
After being the last LMP1 teams to record times, the #11 car was driven to fifth by 2009 Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button while the #17 was sixth.
The #10 DragonSpeed was seventh ahead of the ByKolles entry, which prompted another red flag stoppage in the closing stages of the session after grounding to a halt on track.
At the head of the LMP2 field was TDS Racing, with Loic Duval posting the team’s best lap of the session in the #28 machine. The team also completed the most mileage of any car during FP1, with 32 laps recorded.
The Chip Ganassi Racing Ford’s led the times in GTE Pro, with the #66 squad beating the #67 team by 0.7s.
Dempsey-Proton Racing similarly locked-out the top two spots on the GTE Am timesheet, with the Le Mans 24 Hours class winning #88 car ahead of the #77.
Third in class was the #86 Gulf Racing-prepared Aston Martin. However, the team ended the session under investigation after making contact with the #37 Jackie Chan Racing LMP2 entry.