The first Free Practice for the Monza Four-Hour race, the second round of the 2018 European Le Mans Series took place on Friday morning under sunny skies with an air temperature of 24°. Racing Engineering used the one-hour session to allow their drivers, Norman Nato, Paul Petit and Olivier Pla to set up their Oreca 07-Gibson for the legendary Italian circuit. Once again, the Spanish team were right on the pace with Norman setting the fourth fastest time of 1:37.404 and the three drivers completed thirty-two laps, more than any other team.

Saturday morning’s Free Practice session saw the sunny weather continue although it was cloudier and a little cooler with both air and track temperatures of 20°. Olivier drove for the first twenty minutes, setting a best time of 1:38.170, before handing over to Norman who carried out more set-up work until the session was red-flagged after forty-eight minutes. The session resumed with just over thirty minutes to run with Paul Petit now driving and he continued to work with the Racing Engineering team to prepare the chassis for the race and there was no attempt to improve on the earlier lap time.

For the afternoon Qualifying it was warmer with air and track temperatures of 24° and 26° respectively and, for this weekend, Olivier Pla would be driving in the ten-minute session. The experienced Frenchman did three laps and, just as he was about to go for a flying lap with four minutes remaining, a red flag bought the session to a pause. The cars returned to the track with just two and a half minutes remaining, leaving Olivier only enough time for one flying lap and he lowered his time to 1:37.155 for twelfth fastest.

Although the Racing Engineering team would like to be higher on the grid in a four hour race there is plenty of time to gain positions and the Spanish team and its three drivers will be aiming to be on the podium and even to win again.

TEAM COMMENTS

Alan Queille - Technical Director: "This wasn’t the qualifying session we were hoping for after a promising testing and free practice. We had several technical issues during this session and are looking into them now and it’s a pity they kept us from showing the real pace of the car. This forces us to have a perfect race strategy tomorrow in order to recover positions and score points."

Olivier Pla: “I had some rear locking problems on the first lap and after this I spun coming out of the chicane as the traction control was not active or not playing its game. We suffered from an electrical problem, which caused me to lose the throttle twice, once right before the start finish line on my last lap. Starting the race from 12th is not where we should be, but everything is possible in the race. I am confident we will have a good car tomorrow and we will now concentrate on the race.”