WEC 6 Hours of Austin Free Practice 2: Rebellion Dominates but Breaks its Engine

We take the same and start again. The winning trio is once again Rebellion, Toyota, and an LMP2. In prototype, the session was decided in the first quarter-hour. From the first round of fast laps, the Rebellion clocked in at 1:48.804, a second ahead of the Toyota #8 of Buemi, Nakajima, and Hartley. Behind, four LMP2s came in between, the best being the Oreca of Racing Team Nederland (De Vries, Van Eerd, Van der Garde). Then in eighth place only, we found the Toyota #7, at 1:51.185.

Outside the rankings, the session was much more disrupted than the first. Two red flags were displayed. The first was due to the stoppage of the Aston Martin #95 driven by Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim, which lost a wheel. The second shortened the session by ten minutes when the Dempsey Proton Racing Porsche stopped on the track.

But above all, the Rebellion experienced an engine failure a few minutes after the halfway point of the session. A hard blow for the Swiss team, who will most likely have to change the engine, three hours before the qualifiers.

In the GTE-Pro category, the three permanent manufacturers of the WEC swapped the lead position. Aston Martin dominated, followed by Ferrari, before Porsche claimed the session with the #92 of Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen in 2:01.716. It finished just ahead of the #95 Aston Martin, which pushed hard after its forced stop. Six cars are within the same second, including the Corvette.

In a subdued position during Free Practice 1, the American bounced back. The #63 improved its time by nearly two seconds, while the other cars ran approximately the same times. Corvette will thus be in the fight during the race and for the pole.

In LMP2, the Racing Team Netherlands dominated with nearly a second lead over its runner-up, the Oreca of United Autosports.

In GTE-Am, Dempsey-Proton Racing once again came out on top, this time with the #77 of Pera, Ried, Campbell.