ORECA stay on top in Ricard test
The best of the Courage-ORECAs again topped the times in the morning session on day two of the Le Mans Series test at Paul Ricard
Nicolas Lapierre set the fastest time of the test so far on Monday morning in the lead AIM-engined LC70E. The Frenchman's 1:40.903 lap represented an improvement on his previous best of the test by eight tenths.
ORECA boss Hugues de Chaunac explained that Lapierre's time was one second faster than the team went at the Ricard test this time last year.
"On average we are 1.5 seconds faster over a stint," he said. "Consistency is one of our big targets for this year, so that is very satisfying."
The latest iteration of the Courage-ORECA LMP1 is also moving towards meeting the team's second target of improved reliability. The two cars ran for five hours on Sunday night with only minor issues.
"We had two small problems," de Chaunac said, "but we understand what we have to do to fix them."
Second fastest on Monday morning was the Speedy/Sebah Lola-Aston Martin in which Neel Jani has joined LMS regulars Marcel Fassler, Andrea Belicchi and Nicolas Prost.
The remaining Lola-Aston Martin ended up fifth in the Monday morning times, just over two seconds slower than Lapierre's best.
The Portuguese ASM Ginetta-Zytek team topped the times in LMP2 with a lap of 1:43.355, nearly nine tenths faster than the Team Essex Porsche RS Spyder.
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