24 Heures du Mans – Free Practice 1: Sébastien Bourdais in the lead, Alpine and Peugeot far behind

It rolled very quickly from the very first moments. The best Hypercar drivers wasted no time in beating the benchmark from the test day. Barely six minutes after the green flag, cars could already be seen under 3:26, with the Ferrari #50 at 3:25.302.

If the drivers quickly put the pedal to the metal, the first mistakes quickly appeared. A first full course yellow occurred after about ten minutes following the off-track excursion of the LMP2 #24 from Nielsen Racing.

The first red flag came at 1:44 from the end of the session. The Mercedes #63 of Stephen Grove hit the wall at the exit of the Dunlop curve. The Iron Lynx car was heavily damaged.

A few minutes later, race control waved a new red flag. However, there were no incidents on the track. It was actually an exercise. Once the cars set off again, the #6 Porsche slightly accelerated and took the second fastest time of the session, nearly three-tenths behind the #50 Ferrari.

Less than an hour before the end, under a very aggressive sun, all the Hypercars, except for the Cadillac #38, had gone under the 3:30 mark. The Aston Martin #007 and #009 were having a rather constructive session. On the other hand, for the French teams, it wasn’t going well: the Peugeot and Alpine cars were in the 15th, 17th, 18th, and 20th positions.

In the Hypercar category, the hierarchy remained unchanged: the Cadillac #38 maintained the lead until the end, ahead of the Ferrari #50 and the Porsche #6. In the LMP2s, the #16 from RLR M Sport led the category with a margin of nearly three-tenths over Inter Europol. Finally, in the GT3s, Akkodis ASP once again demonstrated that this old Lexus could still be competitive, setting the best benchmark. Notably, everyone, except for the Mercedes #63, achieved times under the four-minute mark.