Shanghai WEC: Rebellion takes 1-2 in third practice

After both of Friday's practice sessions were held in damp conditions, teams were able to get their first dry running of the weekend during Saturday morning's one-hour session.

Bruno Senna took an early lead in the #1 Rebellion R-13-Gibson with a 1m45.137s lap, which stood as the best time in the session - a mere 0.019s ahead of the sister #3 Rebellion of Thomas Laurent.

The best of the Toyota TS050 Hybrids was the #8 car of Kazuki Nakajima, who was a further 0.012s back in third.

Toyota's #7 car endured an eventful session, as Kamui Kobayashi spun at Turn 1 after 13 minutes and later in the session was seen briefly touring on track before returning to speed.

Kobayashi's best lap of 1m45.321s put him fourth, a little under two tenths behind the lead Toyota.

SMP Racing's pair of BR Engineering BR1-AERs were fifth and sixth fastest, with the #17 car of Stephane Sarrazin ahead of the #11 machine driven by Jenson Button.

DragonSpeed's customer BR1 and the solo ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan again completed the LMP1 order.

Ex-Toyota LMP1 racer Anthony Davidson set the pace in LMP2 for the DragonSpeed team with an early effort of 1m50.907s in the #31 Oreca 07.

That was enough to eclipse the Signatech Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre by exactly half a tenth of a second.

Jackie Chan DC Racing's lead entry, the #37 that had topped both Friday sessions, was third in the hands of Nabil Jeffri.

Aston Martin topped the times in GTE Pro courtesy of a 1m59.628s lap by Nicki Thiim in the #95 Vantage GTE.

The only other car in class to dip beneath the two-minute mark was the #66 Ford GT of Olivier Pla, who ended up two tenths off the pace, with the lead Porsche 911 RSR of Michael Christensen completing the top three.

Corvette Racing propped up the class timesheets, the #64 C7.R ending up 2.2s off the pace in the dry.

GTE Am was led by the Clearwater Ferrari squad, Matt Griffin recording the car's best time of 2m01.583s.

Gulf Racing driver Michael Wainwright caused a full-course yellow halfway through the session when he got the #86 Porsche beached in the gravel at Turn 2.

Session results:

Pos.	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Time	Gap
1	1	Andre Lotterer   Bruno Senna   Neel Jani	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'45.137
2	3	Mathias Beche   Thomas Laurent   Gustavo Menezes	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'45.156	0.019
3	8	Fernando Alonso   Kazuki Nakajima   Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'45.164	0.027
4	7	Kamui Kobayashi   Mike Conway   Jose Maria Lopez	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'45.321	0.184
5	17	Stéphane Sarrazin   Matevos Isaakyan   Egor Orudzhev	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'45.998	0.861
6	11	Jenson Button   Vitaly Petrov   Mikhail Aleshin	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'46.063	0.926
7	10	Renger van der Zande   Ben Hanley   James Allen	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'46.390	1.253
8	4	Oliver Webb   Tom Dillmann   James Rossiter	ENSO CLM P1/01	LMP1	1'47.742	2.605
9	31	Anthony Davidson   Pastor Maldonado   Roberto Gonzalez	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'50.907	5.770
10	36	Nicolas Lapierre   Pierre Thiriet   Andre Negrao	Alpine A470	LMP2	1'50.957	5.820
11	37	Nabil Jeffri   Weiron Tan   Jazeman Jaafar	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'51.151	6.014
12	38	Ho-Pin Tung   Stéphane Richelmi   Gabriel Aubry	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'51.394	6.257
13	28	Loic Duval   François Perrodo   Matthieu Vaxiviere	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'51.614	6.477
14	50	Enzo Guibbert   Romano Ricci   Erwin Creed	Ligier JSP 217	LMP2	1'51.690	6.553
15	29	Giedo van der Garde   Nyck de Vries   Frits van Eerd	Dallara P217	LMP2	1'51.717	6.580
16	95	Nicki Thiim   Marco Sorensen	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'59.628	14.491
17	66	Stefan Mücke   Olivier Pla	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'59.858	14.721
18	92	Michael Christensen   Kevin Estre	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	2'00.158	15.021
19	51	James Calado   Alessandro Pier Guidi	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	2'00.305	15.168
20	71	Sam Bird   Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	2'00.347	15.210
21	91	Gianmaria Bruni   Richard Lietz	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	2'00.592	15.455
22	82	Antonio Felix da Costa   Tom Blomqvist	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	2'00.662	15.525
23	97	Maxime Martin   Alex Lynn	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	2'00.681	15.544
24	67	Harry Tincknell   Andy Priaulx	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	2'00.795	15.658
25	81	Nick Catsburg   Martin Tomczyk	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	2'00.867	15.730
26	61	Matthew Griffin   Mok Weng Sun   Keita Sawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	2'01.583	16.446
27	64	Oliver Gavin   Tommy Milner	Chevrolet Corvette C7R	LMGTE PRO	2'01.713	16.576
28	54	Giancarlo Fisichella   Francesco Castellacci   Thomas Flohr	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	2'01.841	16.704
29	88	Matteo Cairoli  Riccardo Pera  Khaled Al Cubaisi	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	2'02.151	17.014
30	56	Jörg Bergmeister   Patrick Lindsey   Egidio Perfetti	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	2'02.229	17.092
31	98	Pedro Lamy   Paul Dalla Lana   Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	2'02.282	17.145
32	77	Christian Ried   Matt Campbell  Julien Andlauer	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	2'02.451	17.314
33	70	Olivier Beretta   Eddie Cheever III   Motoaki Ishikawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	2'02.619	17.482
34	86	Michael Wainwright   Benjamin Barker  Thomas Preining	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	2'02.643	17.506
35	90	Jonathan Adam   Salih Yoluc   Charles Eastwood	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	2'04.041	18.904