The opening track action for the 85th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans got underway at the Circuit de la Sarthe in France on Wednesday with a four-hour free practice session followed by the first of three qualifying practice sessions. 

 

While practice was held under largely sunny skies in blistering heat, the evening session was run in cooling, but still warm conditions into the night-time. It served as a valuable opening day of action for Pierre Ragues, in his 11th Le Mans, and the Signatech Alpine Matmut squad, despite numerous yellow flag and slow zone periods, as well as traffic on the famous 13.629km circuit.

 

Over the four-hour practice session, Pierre and his team-mates Nelson Panciatici and André Negrão totalled 35 laps of the circuit in their #35 Alpine A470, finishing the session 21st overall and 15th in the competitive LMP2 class. That opening session was focused on long runs and tyre evaluation with Dunlop with Pierre happy with his initial pace. 

 

The first qualifying practice was a more disjointed session. Initially delayed by 20 minutes, it was shortened to 1h40 so the track action did not exceed the midnight finish time. With teams keen to make up lost time, it was a busy session with some yellow flag, slow zone periods, and plenty of traffic to navigate. 

 

New tyre runs were disrupted as a result with clean laps not easy. However, the team set the 13th best time overall and seventh in class, over 20 laps. With four more hours of running scheduled for Thursday, run over two sessions, there is plenty of time to make up ground and show even more representative pace ahead of the 24-hour event.