Blink and you would have missed it as the FIA World Endurance Championship completed its mandatory Prologue test at Imola today having been forced to do so from global events.
Whilst we would have been pleased to say that all passed off without incident for the Heart of Racing team, that would sadly not be the case after Marco Sorensen suffered a heavy off in his #008 Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar during the wet morning session.
Without knowing too much about causation, the green V12 powered monster was seen spinning through the gravel before connecting heavily with the tyre protected circuit barrier causing significant damage to the car.
Whilst the Dane was able to extricate himself from the car and after mandatory medical assistance, was fortunately deemed fit to continue with the upcoming race weekend but the same couldn’t be said for the #009 car with the team now working hard to build up a new car utilising their spare monocoque in time for Fridays first Free Practice session.
Meanwhile, their sister #007 Hypercar of Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble got in the laps and hence valuable data during the eight hours of track availability finishing the day just outside of the top ten within an extended class of seventeen cars.
It was better news however, across the team garage to where both Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s are prepared as Mattia Drudi powered the #27 car that he shares with Zacharie Robichon and Ian James to the top of the overall class leaderboard.
Their sister #23 car of Jonny Adam and a series debuting Kobe Pauwels and Gray Newell also fared well within the wet conditions finishing mid table in the results but with both debutant drivers getting in a decent number of laps between them.
That was of course just testing and the real business will begin on Friday ahead of Qualifying on Saturday and the start of this six-hour race opener at 13:00hrs local.
Photo credits – Teams / AMR / social media