Alpine's Gounon leads the way in second WEC practice session at Spa

The Alpine Endurance Team took a turn at the front with its pair of A424 LMDh prototypes in Thursday's second WEC practice session at Spa-Francorchamps.

Jules Gounon was the fast man for 'Les Bleus', posting a 2m01.816s in the No. 36. He was the only driver to set a sub-2m02s lap in the Hypercar field, making him comfortably the fastest driver of the day.

The No. 35 sister Alpine ended up second in the running order, a fraction under three tenths off, with the No. 20 BMW picking up the mantle of 'best of the rest' after a 2:02.179 from Sheldon van der Linde.

Rounding out the top five were the No. 009 Aston Martin and the No. 15 BMW, both within six tenths of the benchmark time.

The No. 50 Ferrari 499P, which paced the field in the opening practice session, finished the day with the sixth-fastest time, a 2m02.381s, an improvement over Antonio Fuoco's best earlier in the day. The Imola-winning Toyota was 13th with a best time 1.5 seconds off after 33 laps.

In the LMGT3 ranks, Heart of Racing team's No. 23 Aston Martin Vantage claimed the prime spot on the timing screens after multiple flyers from Dudu Barrichello. His best tour was a 2m17.769s, set just before handing over to the team's Bronze, Gray Newell, for some qualifying prep.

Racing Team Turkey's Corvette, driven rapidly by Peter Dempsey early on, was next up, 0.2s off, with the No. 79 Iron Lynx AMG, No. 21 Vista AF Ferrari and No. 78 Akkodis ASP Lexus third, fourth and fifth.

The No. 78 was quick, but did hit trouble, causing the second of two red flags during the session in the closing stages when Tom Van Rompuy pulled off the track at the Bus Stop after losing a wheel.

The first stoppage was called for debris clearance at La Source and Les Combes.

Next on the agenda is Free Practice 2 at 10:10 local time tomorrow morning.