Kubica leads the way for Ferrari in first Imola 6H practice

Ferrari's form from the FIA World Endurance Championship Prologue continued this morning in Free Practice 1 ahead of the season-opening 6 Hours of Imola. With the sun shining, Robert Kubica put the No. 83 to the top of the screens on a full set of soft Michelin tires with a 1m31.739s, leading a 1-2-3 for the Italian brand on home soil.

Teams in Hypercar used the session to experiment with the soft and medium compounds, with the No. 83 running on a full set of softs early to achieve the session best time and other teams using either a combination of softs on the left and mediums on the right, or mediums on all four corners.

The No. 50 was second in the order, with a lap 0.023s off Kubica from Antonio Fuoco. The No. 51 completed the top three, with a best time of 1m31.982s from Antonio Giovinazzi.

Best of the rest was the No. 12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series R, with a 1m32.183s from Will Stevens early in the 90 minutes of track action. The two Peugeots completed the top five.

JOTA's new sporting director, Leon Price, felt it was a positive start to the weekend for the GM contingent.

"I think at this stage, it's really important for us to just get laps in because we've not had so much track time with the disruption in the testing schedule," he noted. "So it's really important for the guys to get some laps under their belt.

"We did 75 laps in total with both cars in FP1, so I think we can be quite pleased with that and there's plenty of data to look through and try and improve. Naturally, we have few tweaks on the cars between now and FP2 to try and dial it in and get the most out of the cars."

Further down the order in the Hypercar class, Genesis Magma Racing, in its first practice session as a factory in the WEC, enjoyed a productive session. The two GMR-001s set lap times within two seconds of the fastest Ferrari and completed more than 45 laps.

Also of note was the presence of the No. 009 Aston Martin. The Heart of Racing team-run Valkyrie, built around a new tub after Marco Sorensen's crash in the test, completed 40 laps and ended up 16th in the order.

LMGT3 was topped by Racing Team Turkey's TF Sport-run Corvette with a 1m42.678s from factory driver Charlie Eastwoof that would put the car almost two tenths clear of the field. Garage 59's No. 58 McLaren ended up second in the tight session. The No. 27 Aston Martin completed the top three, and the No. 21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari made it four brands in the top four.

It was a mostly clean session, with just one notable full course yellow for contact between Darren Leung in the No. 32 WRT BMW and the No. 61 Mercedes-AMG of Rui Andrade. Antares Au also had an off in the No. 10 Garage 59 McLaren after a mistake under braking, but recovered and continued.

Free Practice 2 is set to get underway at 3:15pm local time.

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