Murphy tops ELMS test at Ricard

The Murphy Prototypes team and Nathanael Berthon topped the times in the official European Le Mans Series test at Paul Ricard.

Berthon set the best time of the two-day test aboard the Murphy ORECA-Nissan 03R in the opening session on Monday morning. The Frenchman, who will share the open-top ORECA in the full ELMS with GT graduate Michael Lyons and Mark Patterson, recorded a 1m48.155s. That put him three tenths up on the 1m48.432s set by Tristan Gommendy in TDS Racing's new Nissan-engined ORECA 05 coupe in the Tuesday morning session.

Team boss Greg Murphy told AUTOSPORT: "Nathanael was fast as usual and we ran through our programme, so we are very happy and looking forward to the first race at Silverstone."

Third fastest was the Greaves Motorsport Gibson-Nissan 015s in which Jon Lancaster set a 1m48.955s.

New LMP1 driver Harry Tincknell, who returned to the Jota Sport team for the test after Nick Yelloly's late withdrawal from its ELMS campaign, ended up fourth in the team's Gibson-Nissan with a 1m48.967s.

Alessandro Pierguidi was quickest in GTE in the best of the AF Corse team's Ferrari 458 Italias, while Luca Persiani topped the times in GTC in SMP Racing's GT3-spec Ferrari.