Productive start to WEC day for AMR at Silverstone

A very mixed bag of events was the story of the day for the first Free Practice session of the World Endurance Championship entry here at Silverstone this morning.

Mirroring positioning within the timings pages of the European Le Mans Series it would appear (on paper at least) that many GTE cars are not necessarily showing their full hand despite the new Balance of Performance monitoring system being already in situe.

For Daniel Serra in the #97 car, the most important thing for today was seat time in the car around the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit, a circuit that he has never raced on before today as repeated sim sessions can only help so much. Like wise with the return of Richie Stanaway to the team (in the #95 car) for the first three rounds including Le Mans having missed out on multiple extended test sessions in the car over the winter.


Certainly, all the AMR cars were fuelled for long runs as the three AMR Vantages would end up clocking the higher number of laps between the GTE field cum the end of the session.

The #98 Am car of Pedro Lamy, Paul Dalla Lana and Mathias Lauda was the first to return to the pits with Lamy having started, to receive a new rear wing assembly and an adjustment to something within. That process was be adjusted again as Dalla Lana then swapped with Lauda when he got in for his first session.

Further up the pit lane the two new Porsche 911 RSR's were frequently in and out of the pit lane and garages as they worked through their programme and the #66 Ford appeared to have an issue with its near side rear wheel which took that car back into the garage for a few minutes.

At the completion of the 90 minute session, the #95 Stanaway/Thiim/Sorensen maintained its session long perch at the top off the GTE timing board to end the morning just 0.2 seconds ahead of the teams #98 Am car with a 1:59:11 - a comparable time to the qualification time of the TF Sport GTE in ELMS.


What was conspicuous was that both AF Corse Ferarri's sat at the foot of the Pro class cars and that is something that has not been seen for some time.

With weather conditions now deteriorating here at Silverstone, the second Free Practice session is bound to be affected as the water levels build on track. That session is due to at 16:45.