Toyota took first blood as track action ahead of next weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours round of the World Endurance Championship began with the official pre-race test.
Kamui Kobayashi topped the times in the first of the two three-hour sessions of the Le Mans Test Day on Sunday with a 3m28.467s lap aboard the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar. That gave him a margin of more than seven tenths over Porsche driver Kevin Estre, who ended up on a 3m29.205s aboard the #6 963 LMDh fielded by the factory Porsche Penske Motorsport team.
Jose Maria Lopez got 10 laps in the #7 car after being brought back into Toyota’s Hypercar line-up following the injuries sustained by former team-mate Mike Conway in a cycling incident, the Argentine lapping almost exactly one second from Kobayashi’s session best. Kobayashi’s session-topping time was more than a second up on the 3m30.685s with which Ferrari Antonio Fuoco went quickest in the opening session of the pre-race test last year and already a tenth up on the afternoon best of 3m29.
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