Peugeot topped an FIA World Endurance Championship session for the first time this year, with Mikkel Jensen setting a 1:35.878 to go quickest in the third and final free practice session for the 6 Hours of Monza.
The Dane set the lap early on in the session on board the #93 Peugeot 9X8, and was never beaten throughout the hour by the competition in the Hypercar class. However, the car only did 10 laps, the least of any of the 13 Hypercars in the session.
In second, just 0.045 off Jensen, was Antonio Fuoco in the #50 Ferrari 499P, which did over triple the amount of laps compared to the leading Peugeot.
In third was Loic Duval in the sister #94 Peugeot, just over two tenths off. In a more encouraging show for the French manufacturer, the car did 31 laps, hopefully negating any chronic reliability fears at the circuit the team made its WEC debut at last year.
In fourth was the other 499P, Antonio Giovinazzi behind the wheel of the #51 Ferrari, just under a tenth off Duval.
Fifth was Alex Lynn in the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R, while Yifei Ye was sixth in the leading Porsche, the #38 JOTA Porsche 963. Seventh was Harry Tincknell in the #99 Proton Porsche 963, the car’s first race weekend, meaning both customer Porsches beat the factory cars in this session.
Eighth was the first of the Toyotas, Kamui Kobayashi in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid. Both of the Japanese cars suffered with rear instability under braking throughout the session, with the team changing rear bodywork to try and fix the problem, but seemingly to no avail.
Ninth was Michael Christensen in the #5 Porsche 963, while rounding out the Hypercar top 10 was Olivier Pla in the #708 Glickenhaus 007.
In LMP2, Pietro Fittipaldi went quickest in the #28 JOTA Oreca 07-Gibson, with the Brazilian setting a 1:39.621. Second was Gabriel Aubry in the #10 Vector Sport Oreca 07-Gibson, just a smidge over two and a half tenths off Fittipaldi. Charles Milesi was third in the #36 Alpine Oreca 07-Gibson, a further 0.015 off Aubry.
Finally, Matteo Cairoli topped the timesheets in GTE-Am in a Porsche 1-2-3. Cairoli was behind the wheel of the #56 Project 1 AO Porsche 911 RSR, with the Italian setting a 1:46.762. Two tenths slower was another Italian, Alessio Picariello in the #60 Iron Lynx Porsche 911 RSR, while just a few hundredths slower was Mikkel Pedersen in the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche 911 RSR.
Qualifying begins at 14:40 local time with the GTE-Am cars out on track first, followed by the LMP2s and Hypercars.
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