Spa WEC: Toyota locks out top three in third practice

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.	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Time
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