Practice report
WEC Spa-Francorchamps
Spa WEC: Toyota locks out top three in third practice
Toyota locked out the top three positions in third practice for the WEC 6 Hours of Spa on Friday morning.
Jamie Klein
Edited: May 5, 2017, 10:34 AM
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After leading the way in both Thursday sessions, the Japanese marque's two high-downforce TS050 Hybrids set the pace with laptimes within 0.005s of each other.
The session was delayed by 20 minutes for barrier repairs after an accident in Porsche Carrera Cup France qualifying, but once it began, Kazuki Nakajima and Mike Conway set their best times on their first flying laps in the #8 and #7 cars respectively.
Nakajima led the way with a 1m55.233s, with Conway posting a 1m55.238s to slot into second.
The low-downforce configuration #9 car jumped ahead of the two Porsches into third place midway through the session, as Toyota returnee Nicolas Lapierre lapped in 1m55.448s.
Andre Lotterer was quickest of the Porsche drivers, with his best time of 1m56.404 putting the #1 919 Hybrid in fourth, 1.171s down on Nakajima's benchmark.
The #2 Porsche of Brendon Hartley was a further 1.7s back in fifth place.
In LMP2, the pace was set by Alex Lynn in the #26 G-Drive Oreca-Gibson, the Briton recording a best time of 2m01.708s to go two tenths clear of Mathias Beche in the #13 Rebellion car.
The class-winning car from Silverstone, the #38 JOTA Sport-run entry, was third-fastest in the hands of Ho-Pin Tung, more than 1.3s off the pace.
Six LMP2 cars outpaced the sole LMP1 privateer entry, the ByKolles ENSO CLM-Nissan, which was 8.7s off the pace of the hybrids with James Rossiter - fresh from his Fuji Super GT appearance - at the wheel.
Ferrari takes 1-2 in GTE
Ferrari's pair of AF Corse-run Ferraris led the way in the GTE-Pro category, with Alessandro Pier Guidi putting the #51 488 GTE at the head of the timesheets with a last-minute effort of 2m14.904s.
Sam Bird was just two tenths adrift in the sister #71 car, but some six tenths ahead of Harry Tincknell in the best of the Ford GTs.
The best of the Am-class runners, the #77 Proton Porsche of Matteo Cairoli, was fourth overall among the Am contingent with a 2m15.893s.
That effort was two tenths faster than Frederic Makowiecki's effort in the best of the GTE-Pro 911 RSRs, which was fifth in class behind the second of the Fords.
Practice results:
Pos.#DriversCarClassTime 1 8 
Anthony Davidson
Kazuki Nakajima
Sébastien Buemi Toyota TS050 Hybrid LMP1 1'55.233 2 7 Kamui Kobayashi
Mike Conway Toyota TS050 Hybrid LMP1 1'55.238 3 9 
Stéphane Sarrazin
Nicolas Lapierre
Yuji Kunimoto Toyota TS050 Hybrid LMP1 1'55.448 4 1 
Andre Lotterer
Neel Jani
Nick Tandy Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 1'56.404 5 2 Timo Bernhard
Brendon Hartley
Earl Bamber Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 1'58.096 6 26 
Roman Rusinov
Pierre Thiriet
Alex Lynn Oreca 07 LMP2 2'01.708 7 13 
Nelson Piquet Jr.
David Heinemeier Hansson
Mathias Beche Oreca 07 LMP2 2'01.970 8 38 Oliver Jarvis
Ho-Pin Tung
Thomas Laurent Oreca 07 LMP2 2'03.287 9 35 Nelson Panciatici
Pierre Ragues
Andre Negrao Alpine A470 LMP2 2'03.335 10 31 Bruno Senna
Julien Canal
Nicolas Prost Oreca 07 LMP2 2'03.354 11 37 David Cheng
Tristan Gommendy
Alex Brundle Oreca 07 LMP2 2'04.263 12 36 Romain Dumas
Gustavo Menezes
Matt Rao Alpine A470 LMP2 2'04.270 13 4 Oliver Webb
Dominik Kraihamer
James Rossiter ENSO CLM P1/01 LMP1 2'04.338 14 34 
Karun Chandhok
Nigel Moore
Philip Hanson Ligier JSP 217 LMP2 2'04.396 15 24 Jean-Eric Vergne
Jonathan Hirschi
Tor Graves Oreca 07 LMP2 2'04.625 16 28 François Perrodo
Emmanuel Collard
Matthieu Vaxivière Oreca 07 LMP2 2'05.236 17 25 Vitaly Petrov
Simon Trummer
Roberto Gonzalez Oreca 07 LMP2 2'06.130 18 71 Sam Bird
Davide Rigon Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE PRO 2'15.100 19 77 Christian Ried
Matteo Cairoli
Marvin Dienst Porsche 911 RSR (991) LMGTE AM 2'15.893 20 66 Stefan Mücke
Olivier Pla
Billy Johnson Ford GT LMGTE PRO 2'15.981 21 51 James Calado
Alessandro Pier Guidi Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE PRO 2'16.050 22 91 Richard Lietz
Frédéric Makowiecki Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE PRO 2'16.123 23 97 Darren Turner
Jonathan Adam
Daniel Serra Aston Martin Vantage LMGTE PRO 2'16.142 24 67 Pipo Derani
Harry Tincknell
Andy Priaulx Ford GT LMGTE PRO 2'16.252 25 92 Michael Christensen
Kevin Estre Porsche 911 RSR LMGTE PRO 2'16.329 26 98 
Pedro Lamy
Paul Dalla Lana
Mathias Lauda Aston Martin Vantage LMGTE AM 2'16.603 27 61 
Matt Griffin
Mok Weng Sun
Keita Sawa Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE AM 2'17.146 28 95 Marco Sorensen
Nicki Thiim
Richie Stanaway Aston Martin Vantage LMGTE PRO 2'18.166 29 54 Francesco Castellacci
Miguel Molina
Thomas Flohr Ferrari 488 GTE LMGTE AM 2'18.461 30 86 Michael Wainwright
Ben Barker
Nick Foster Jr. Porsche 911 RSR (991) LMGTE AM 2'21.131
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