WEC: Freins' prologue time is better than last year's pole

      Yesterday, the prologue to the WEC season ended in Qatar, and in the fourth and final session, Robin Frijns, an experienced Dutchman who has been combining Formula E with endurance racing for several years, showed the best time of the two-day tests.

      Robin made his WEC debut in the Hypercar category last season, he drives for the BMW M Team WRT factory team and yesterday he completed a lap in 1:38.971 on the BMW M Hybrid V8 sports prototype. This result was not only the best among the participants of the prologue, it was also faster than last year's pole time on this track, shown by Australian Matt Campbell on a Porsche hypercar.

      Sebastien Bourdais, Cadillac Team Jota driver and Jenson Button's team mate in the No. 38 crew, showed the second time yesterday. He lost 0.145 seconds to Frines, but only 0.025 seconds lost to Robert Kubica in a Ferrari 499P, who was fastest on the first day of the prologue.

      In total, two BMW hypercars, two Cadillac and two Ferrari cars were in the top six yesterday, but the Alpine Endurance Team, its crew No. 36, for which Mick Schumacher stands together with his teammates, rose to the seventh line of Saturday's protocol.

      Unlike the first day of testing, there were no special incidents yesterday, except that at the very beginning of the session Bourdais flew off the track to the side of the road at turn 13, and his Cadillac got stuck in the gravel, so he needed outside help to get back. A similar fate befell the debutants of the LMDh class, the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar with tail number 007, an hour and a half before the end of the prologue.

      The pre-season tests are over, now work on the Losail track will resume on Wednesday morning, when the training sessions leading up to the "1812 km of Qatar" will begin.