Making it three fastest laps in a row, Jose Maria Lopez is the man to beat at the FIA World Endurance Championship 6 Hours of Monza.
The Argentinian driver led the way in the first Toyota Gazoo Racing one-two of the weekend in the final practice session ahead of qualifying. Lopez looks to have settled well into racing the Toyota GR010 Hybrid around the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, topping the time sheet of every practice session. Eyes will be on him to make it four in a row and bring Toyota the first pole position for this circuit.
His 1:36.137 was over a second faster than time set by driver of the sister car Brendon Hartley, giving the #7 crew confidence going into qualifying. Toyota will have been happy to see both their cars ahead of the rest of the Hypercar entries, as the #8 has been getting split from the #7 throughout the first two practice sessions.
It was the #708 Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus that claimed third on the timing board, with Oliver Pla going half a second slower than Hartley with a 1:37.659. He led the Alpine Elf Matmut by a tenth with Nicolas Lapierre splitting the two Glickenhaus entries. All three cars were separated from each other by a tenth of a second, showing that Glickenhaus and Alpine have a similar pace around the Italian track.
Stoffel Vandoorne put a JOTA fastest in LMP2, claiming a 1:38.910 in the #28 machine. This put him two tenths quicker than United Autosport‘s Filipe Alberquerque and three tenths up on third-placed Felipe Nasr in the Risi Competizione. For the first time this weekend, the Racing Team Nederland car did not feature in the top three.
Porsche remained on top ahead of qualifying, but it was Giammaria Bruni in the #91 leading the charge instead of the sister #92 car. The 1:46.253 was enough to keep the Italian ahead of second-placed Alessandro Pier Guidi by three tenths. AF Corse kept up their two-three finish from FP2 with Miguel Molina less than a tenth off the sister #51 car. Neel Jani was unable to get within three tenths of the slowest Ferrari, seven tenths off the sister Porsche GT Team car.
Although Nicklas Nielsen led the way in GTE Am with the #83 works AF Corse Ferrari, the Porsche Am cars began pulling the advantage their way with second and third filled by Porsche runners. Team Project 1 sat second, ahead of the #88 Dempsey-Proton Racing.
After the chequered flag, the #60 Iron Lynx Am car suffered an issue, triggering a three-car incident. Claudio Schiavoni was on a run to Ascari when the collision happened. At the time of publishing all involved are OK, but whether the cars will take any further part in the weekend remains to be seen.
After an incident at the same corner during FP2, the Inception Racing Ferrari has been withdrawn from the race with too many repairs needed.
