French endurance racer Pierre Ragues and the Signatech-Alpine team have set the leading pace on the opening day of practice for this weekend’s 3 Hours of Hungaroring, the penultimate round of this season’s European Le Mans Series. 

 

Signatech-Alpine’s Michelin-shod A450 has proven a good match for the circuit with both Ragues and his team-mate Nelson Panciatici finding a good rhythm on the opening day in generally dry conditions. 

 

The team completed 32 laps in the morning session with a best lap of 1m37.529 before adding an additional 31 laps in the afternoon, lowering their benchmark time to 1m36.634. 

 

Unfortunately, Panciatici was adjudged to have overtaken under yellow flags in the final session so the team’s best times have subsequently been removed from the day’s classification. Nonetheless, the demonstrated pace bodes well for tomorrow as the team aims for a pole position battle and a podium challenge. 

 

The Hungarian round of the championship offers one of the most difficult challenges for overtaking so getting a good grid position in Saturday morning’s qualifying session will be crucial.

 

Pierre Ragues commented: “It has been a good opening day for us, in spite of the yellow flag situation in the afternoon. We have been able to set legitimate, competitive lap times at a track that is tight and technically complex, so we can head into qualifying and the race knowing that we have the car underneath us to fight for the podium. I have raced here before and I know that it is going to be difficult with traffic so our focus has to be on getting a clean lap in qualifying and staying out of trouble in the race. I have only carried out runs on used tyres today and my pace was consistently top three so I am optimistic for the rest of the weekend.”