Berthon stays on top in ELMS testing

Sports car newcomer Nathanael Berthon topped the times at the end of the official European Le Mans Series test at Paul Ricard.

The GP2 race winner's best lap of 1m48.342s in the Murphy Prototypes ORECA-Nissan 03 set on Tuesday afternoon ended up as the fastest time of the two-day test. The Frenchman ended up four tenths quicker than Christian Klien, who was second on a 1m48.764s aboard the Morand Morgan-Judd/BMW LMP2.

Murphy team boss Greg Murphy eulogised about Berthon after the test.

"That kid Berthon can drive – he was mighty impressive," he said. "He blitzed everyone on the first day and hopefully we will be able to do a deal, but it all depends on finance."

Murphy has one seat vacant alongside Rodolfo Gonzalez and Tor Graves for its 2014 program, which includes the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Third fastest was the Larbre Competition Morgan-Judd/BMW with a time of 1m49.105s, which was credited to Keiko Ihara.

Klien set the fastest time on day two of the test on Wednesday in the morning, while Tristan Gommendy set best lap in the afternoon in the Alpine-backed Signatech ORECA in which Nelson Panciatici was fourth-fastest overall.

SMP Ferrari driver Andrea Bertolini's best GTE class lap time from the Tuesday night session stood as the fastest of the test by just one hundredth of a second from Matt Griffin in one of AF Corse's 458 Italias.

Franck Perera was fastest in the GTC class aboard his Almeras Porsche 911 GT3-R by less than one hundredth from Kirill Ladygin's SMP Ferrari.

Originally on Autosport.com