Practice report
WEC Fuji
Fuji WEC: Kobayashi sets the pace in extended third practice
Toyota retained a comfortable advantage over its LMP1 opposition in final practice for the WEC 6 Hours of Fuji, with Kamui Kobayashi setting the quickest time.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Oct 13, 2018, 3:06 AM
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Following the disruption to Friday's running, which was marred by three red flags due to kerbs coming loose, Saturday morning's session was extended by 30 minutes.
Fernando Alonso held the upper hand in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid initially with a time of 1m25.180s, but when Kobayashi took over the #7 Toyota he set what proved to be the quickest lap of the session, a 1m24.589s.
Alonso's FP2 benchmark of 1m23.973s remains the quickest time of the weekend so far, however.
SMP Racing regained its mantle of top privateer thanks to a late time of 1m25.675s from Egor Orudzhev in the #17 BR Engineering BR1-AER - a little over a second off the pace set by Toyota.
That was enough to beat the best of the Rebellion R-13-Gibsons, the #1 car of Neel Jani, by four tenths.
The Silverstone-winning #3 Rebellion occupied third for much of the session, but ended up fifth with Gustavo Menezes just four hundredths behind squadmate Jani.
Jenson Button set the #11 SMP BR1's best time, which was only good enough for sixth, ahead of DragonSpeed's customer Gibson-powered BR1.
The ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan was eighth and last of the LMP1s, James Rossiter's best time coming in more than a second adrift of the DragonSpeed BR1.
DC Racing, Porsche top classes
Jackie Chan DC Racing led the way in LMP2 thanks to a 1m29.352s effort by Jazeman Jaafar in the #37 Oreca, the quickest time of the weekend so far in the secondary class.
Friday pacesetter TDS Racing was second with Matthieu Vaxiviere at the wheel of the #28 Oreca, followed by the second Jota Sport-run Jackie Chan car, the #38 of Stephane Richelmi.
Porsche topped the timesheets in GTE Pro courtesy of a 1m36.851s effort from Kevin Estre in the #92 911 RSR.
Best of the rest was the #66 Ford GT of Harry Tincknell, just under two tenths behind, while the lead entries from Aston Martin (Marco Sorensen), Ferrari (Davide Rigon) and BMW (Tom Blomqvist) filled out the rest of the top five.
GTE Am was likewise topped by Porsche, with Ben Barker's benchmark time of 1m37.709s putting the #86 Gulf Racing car ahead of the two slowest GTE Pro cars overall.
The session was red-flagged just as the chequered flag was about to fall when the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin's fire extinguisher went off and came to a halt while Charlie Eastwood was at the wheel.
That was the only stoppage of an otherwise virtually incident-free session.
FP3 results:
Pos. # Drivers Car Class Time Gap 1 7 
Kamui Kobayashi
Mike Conway
Jose Maria Lopez Toyota TS050 Hybrid LMP1 1'24.589 2 8 
Fernando Alonso
Kazuki Nakajima
Sébastien Buemi Toyota TS050 Hybrid LMP1 1'25.180 0.591 3 17 
Stéphane Sarrazin
Matevos Isaakyan
Egor Orudzhev BR Engineering BR1 LMP1 1'25.675 1.086 4 1 
Andre Lotterer
Bruno Senna
Neel Jani Rebellion R13 LMP1 1'26.073 1.484 5 3 
Mathias Beche
Thomas Laurent
Gustavo Menezes Rebellion R13 LMP1 1'26.102 1.513 6 11 
Jenson Button
Vitaly Petrov
Mikhail Aleshin BR Engineering BR1 LMP1 1'26.379 1.790 7 10 Ben Hanley
James Allen BR Engineering BR1 LMP1 1'26.515 1.926 8 4 Oliver Webb
Tom Dillmann
James Rossiter ENSO CLM P1/01 LMP1 1'27.540 2.951 9 37 
Nabil Jeffri
Weiron Tan
Jazeman Jaafar Oreca 07 LMP2 1'29.352 4.763 10 28 
Jean-Eric Vergne
François Perrodo
Matthieu Vaxiviere Oreca 07 LMP2 1'29.582 4.993 11 38 
Ho-Pin Tung
Stéphane Richelmi
Gabriel Aubry Oreca 07 LMP2 1'29.749 5.160 12 31 
Anthony Davidson
Pastor Maldonado
Roberto Gonzalez Oreca 07 LMP2 1'29.857 5.268 13 29 
Giedo van der Garde
Nyck de Vries
Frits van Eerd Dallara P217 LMP2 1'30.752 6.163 14 36 
Nicolas Lapierre
Pierre Thiriet
Andre Negrao Alpine A470 LMP2 1'30.808 6.219 15 50 Romano Ricci
Erwin Creed
Keiko lhara Ligier JSP 217 LMP2 1'32.068 7.479 16 92 
Michael Christensen
Kevin Estre Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE PRO 1'36.851 12.262 17 67 
Harry Tincknell
Andy Priaulx Ford GT LMGTE PRO 1'37.031 12.442 18 95 
Nicki Thiim
Marco Sorensen Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGTE PRO 1'37.045 12.456 19 71 Sam Bird
Davide Rigon Ferrari 488 GTE EVO LMGTE PRO 1'37.170 12.581 20 82 
Antonio Felix da Costa
Tom Blomqvist BMW M8 GTE LMGTE PRO 1'37.176 12.587 21 66 Stefan Mücke
Olivier Pla Ford GT LMGTE PRO 1'37.445 12.856 22 51 James Calado
Alessandro Pier Guidi Ferrari 488 GTE EVO LMGTE PRO 1'37.565 12.976 23 91 Gianmaria Bruni
Richard Lietz Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE PRO 1'37.612 13.023 24 86 
Michael Wainwright
Benjamin Barker
Thomas Preining Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE AM 1'37.709 13.120 25 97 
Maxime Martin
Alex Lynn Aston Martin Vantage AMR LMGTE PRO 1'37.716 13.127 26 81 
Nick Catsburg
Martin Tomczyk BMW M8 GTE LMGTE PRO 1'37.730 13.141 27 77 
Christian Ried
Matt Campbell
Julien Andlauer Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE AM 1'37.833 13.244 28 88 
Matteo Cairoli
Giorgio Roda
Satoshi Hoshino Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE AM 1'37.965 13.376 29 54 
Giancarlo Fisichella
Francesco Castellacci
Thomas Flohr Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE AM 1'38.354 13.765 30 56 
Jörg Bergmeister
Patrick Lindsey
Egidio Perfetti Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE AM 1'38.554 13.965 31 61 
Matthew Griffin
Mok Weng Sun
Keita Sawa Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE AM 1'38.622 14.033 32 70 
Olivier Beretta
Eddie Cheever III
Motoaki Ishikawa Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE AM 1'38.682 14.093 33 98 Pedro Lamy
Paul Dalla Lana
Mathias Lauda Aston Martin Vantage LMGTE AM 1'38.966 14.377 34 90 Jonathan Adam
Salih Yoluc
Charles Eastwood Aston Martin Vantage LMGTE AM 1'39.366 14.777
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