The crew of Alonso on the pole in Sebring, SMP Racing in third place

March 15, 2019 0 By autotimesnews

On the Sebring International Raceway in Florida, after the winter break, the super-season 2018/2019 resumed in the World Endurance Championship. The 1000-mile marathon will be held on Friday, and on Thursday evening a qualification took place, the fastest following which were Toyota representatives.

More on the two-day tests that preceded the start of the race weekend, the crews of the factory team several times updated the record of the circle of the American track, the last time took the WEC stage in 2012. And in qualifying, Toyota set the bar. From the very first attempt, Fernando Alonso showed a record time of 1.40,124, and the success of the Spaniard secured his teammate on the crew of # 8 Kazuki Nakajima, and with an average result of 1.40,318 they won the pole.

Moreover, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, who became second on Toyota TS 050 HYBRID # 7, lost 0.4 seconds to Alonso and Nakajima, showing only 1.40.803 due to Lopez’s mistake on the fast lap.

Egor Orujov and Stefan Sarrazin became the fastest on the non-hybrid sportprototype LMP1, with which Sergey Sirotkin performs with Sebring. And Vitaly Petrov’s teammates Mikhail Alyoshin and Brandon Hartley, who replaced Jenson Button in crew # 11, showed the fifth time.

In LMP2, the double was won by the team Jackie Chan DC Racing, led by Ho-Pin Thun, Gabriel Aubrey and Stefan Richelmi, who became the fastest in the class.

In GTE Pro, the first pole in the superseason was won by the racers of the Porsche factory team Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen, and in the semi-amateur GTE Am class, Christian Reid and Matt Campbell took the first line on the Dempsey Proton Porsche car

The race “1000 miles of Sebring” starts on March 15.