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Action packed day at Spa for Lola entries

Seven Lola designed and built sports cars completed an action packed day of free practice in preparation for the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at Spa-Francorchamps today.

The Rebellion Lola-Toyotas topped the petrol times with Neel Jani and Andrea Belicchi setting the fastest times respectively in the #12 and #13 Lola LMP1 Coupes. Running the new 2012 spec Lola developments for the first time, the Anglo/Swiss team were consistently the quickest non-Audi in the 42 car field.

In LMP2, Status GP were proving to be among the quickest entries in the ultra-competitive field with Alexander Sims setting the second fastest time in the morning session. The rapid Londoner was continuing to impress in the second session until an accident at Raidillion towards the end of the session. Sadly, the resulting damage proved sufficient enough to rule out the Silverstone based squad for the rest of the weekend. The team will now focus on getting the car prepared for the Le Mans test day on June 3.

The Lotus branded Lola B12/80 finished second in the afternoon session with team debutant Renger Van Der Zande signalling his talent and intent with a superb lap of 2m10.407s to claim second best time. The Dutchman joins Thomas Holzer and Mirco Schultis in the German run team this weekend and will be aiming to fight for a top starting place in qualifying tomorrow afternoon.

Gulf Racing made progress throughout the day in their evocatively liveried Lola LMP2 Coupe. The #28 entry of Stefan Johansson, Fabien Giroix and Maxime Jousse lapped consistently and solidly all day, the team getting valuable mileage on the new Lola cost-capped LMP2 coupe. The sister car of Keiko Ihara, Frederic Fatien and Jean-Denis Deletraz had a more difficult day but are confident they can get in to the top ten tomorrow.

The combined LMP1 and LMP2 qualifying session for the Spa 6 Hours kicks off tomorrow at 15.40cet. Follow all the news live at www.twitter.com/LolaRacer

Spa Free Practice Session 2

1.  LMP1 Audi Sport R18 E-Tron #1      2m03.075s
2. LMP1 Audi Sport R18 E-Tron #2     2m04.478s
3. LMP1 Audi Sport R18 E-Tron #2    2m04.816s
4. LMP1 Audi Sport R18 #4   2m04.837s
5. LMP1 Rebellion Lola Toyota #12  2m06.312s
6. LMP1 Pescarolo Team Dome-Judd   2m07.513s
7. LMP1 Rebellion Lola Toyota #13  2m08.400s
8. LMP1 OAK Pescarolo-Judd     2m08.622s
9. LMP2 #24 OAK Pescarolo-Judd      2m10.058s
10. LMP2  Lotus Lola-Lotus #32   2m10.407s
11. LMP1 JRM HPD-ARX     2m10.409s
12. LMP2 Signatech ORECA Nissan #23    2m10.457s
13. LMP2 ADR ORECA-Nissan  2m10.472s
14. LMP2 Pecom ORECA Nissan   2m10.610s
15. LMP2 Starworks  HPD-ARX   2m10.665s
16. LMP2 Jota Zytek-Nissan    2m11.122s
17. LMP2 Status GP Lola-Judd   2m11.275s
18. LMP2 Murphy ORECA-Nissan   2m11.534s
19. LMP2 #35 OAK Morgan-Judd    2m11.820s
20.  LMP2 #28 Gulf Lola-Nissan   2m12.384s
25. LMP2 Gulf Lola-Nissan #29   2m15.531s
26. LMP2 Lola Lotus  #32    2m18.559s