The Le Mans-winning No. 51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P topped the times in the first free practice session of the FIA World Endurance Championship weekend at Monza this afternoon.
Alessandro Pier Guidi set the fastest lap for the car late in the session, a 1m37.533s to go just 0.003s quicker than the Hertz Team JOTA Porsche 963 that spent most of the 90-minute session at the top of the timing screens. Yifei Ye’s 1m37.536 was the No. 38’s best tour of the “Temple of Speed,” putting the British team in a strong position ahead of FP2.
The top three was rounded out by the No. 5 Porsche, which caused an early full-course yellow after stopping out on track. However, it was able to rejoin the session after a reset and finish with a best time just 0.3s off the No. 51 and 38 laps completed.
Hypercar was incredibly close, the top nine ending up with lap times within 0.6s.
Behind the top three, the No. 7 Toyota ended up fourth ahead of the sole Glickenhaus 007 which set an impressive 1m37.917s to go fifth.
Free Practice 1 was the first run for Proton Competition’s brand-new Porsche 963, which was delivered to the team just last week. The German team managed to complete 31 laps and lap faster than all of the LMP2 runners, slotting in 13th.
In LMP2 Team WRT ended up 1-2, with the No. 41 ORECA the quicker of the pair after a 1m40.356s from Robert Kubica. The best of the rest was the Inter Europol Competition ORECA.
GTE Am featured the No. 54 AF Corse Ferrari topping the times, Davide Rigon’s early 1m47.538s enough of a benchmark time to go unchallenged until the end.
The No. 60 Iron Lynx and No. 86 GR Racing Porsches completed the top three, while the championship-leading Corvette C8.R finished up ninth in the classification.
The session was brought to an early end, when red flags were shown with three minutes remaining, following a report of technical issues at race control.
UP NEXT: Free Practice 2 is set to begin at 4:40pm local time this afternoon.