Spa WEC: Toyota tears up form book to lead FP2
Toyota topped a World Endurance Championship session for the first time in 2016 as the Japanese marque beat rivals Porsche and Audi to lead the way in second practice for the 6 Hours of Spa.
Photo by: Toyota Racing
After lagging some way off Porsche in Thursday morning's FP1, Toyota took a surprise 1-2 in the afternoon as Stephane Sarrazin put the #6 Toyota TS050 ahead of the #5 car by 0.165s.
It was Kazuki Nakajima who led in the #5 during the early stages, as the Japanese ex-F1 driver clocked a time of 1m58.711s, but Sarrazin assumed the top spot around 20 minutes into the session with a 1m58.556s, around half a second adrift of Brendon Hartley's morning benchmark.
Those times would be enough for Toyota, which is running its car in a high-downforce configuration at Spa, to beat Porsche comfortably, as the Weissach marque end the session third and fourth.
It was Mark Webber who set the best time for the reigning champion manufacturer to put the #1 919 Hybrid third, 0.620s off the pace, ahead of Marc Lieb, who was 1.045s off the pace in the #2 car.
Audi took fifth spot with its only car to run during the session, the #7, which was piloted throughout by Benoit Treluyer and ended the session 1.743s in its striking low-downforce spec.
The #8 R18 e-tron quattro didn't leave the pits following a problem with the front axle drivetrain, which had to be repaired.
That promoted the best of Rebellion's R-Ones, the #12, to sixth overall, with the #4 ByKolles splitting the two Swiss machines in seventh.
Manor, Ferrari lead respective classes
In LMP2, the newly-formed Manor squad topped a session for the first time this season as Roberto Merhi set the fastest time in class in the #45 Oreca, a 2m07.865s.
That was enough to beat the #38 Jota/G-Drive Gibson, racing in the WEC for the first time this season after taking victory in the ELMS opener at Silverstone - of Giedo van der Garde by 0.854s.
Gustavo Menezes took the #36 Signatech Alpine to the third quickest time, a mere thousandth of a second slower than the Dutchman.
Ferrari meanwhile reasserted its advantage in the GTE Pro class, as James Calado set the pace in the #51 AF Corse machine with a best time of 2m18.494s.
That was enough to outpace the #97 Aston Martin of Richie Stanaway by half a second, with the sister #71 Ferrari and #95 Aston machines next up.
Ferrari swept both GTE classes as Rui Aguas delivered the GTE Am class benchmark time of 2m20.130s in the #83 AF Corse 458 Italia.
The session was ended seven minutes early as the #50 Larbre Corvette, with Yutaka Yamagishi at the wheel, hit the barriers at Fagnes, while the #26 G-Drive Oreca also got stranded out on track.
Practice times:
Pos | Driver | Car | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Kamui Kobayashi Mike Conway Stéphane Sarrazin |
Toyota TS050 HYBRID | 1:58.556 | |
2 | Anthony Davidson Kazuki Nakajima Sébastien Buemi |
Toyota TS050 HYBRID | 1:58.711 | +0.155 |
3 | Mark Webber Brendon Hartley Timo Bernhard |
Porsche 919 Hybrid '16 | 1:59.176 | +0.620 |
4 | Marc Lieb Romain Dumas Neel Jani |
Porsche 919 Hybrid '16 | 1:59.601 | +1.045 |
5 | Andre Lotterer Benoit Tréluyer Marcel Fassler |
Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro '16 | 2:00.299 | +1.743 |
6 | Nelson Piquet Jr. Nick Heidfeld Nicolas Prost |
Rebellion R-One | 2:04.850 | +6.294 |
7 | James Rossiter Oliver Webb Simon Trummer |
CLM P1/01 | 2:05.731 | +7.175 |
8 | Alexandre Imperatori Matheo Tuscher Dominik Kraihamer |
Rebellion R-One | 2:05.966 | +7.410 |
9 | Roberto Merhi Matt Rao Richard Bradley |
ORECA 05 | 2:07.865 | +9.309 |
10 | Simon Dolan Giedo van der Garde Jake Dennis |
Gibson 015S | 2:08.719 | +10.163 |
11 | Nicolas Lapierre Gustavo Menezes Stéphane Richelmi |
Alpine A460 | 2:08.720 | +10.164 |
12 | Roman Rusinov René Rast Nathanael Berthon |
ORECA 05 | 2:08.802 | +10.246 |
13 | Tor Graves Will Stevens James Jakes |
ORECA 05 | 2:09.004 | +10.448 |
14 | Vitaly Petrov Kirill Ladygin Viktor Shaytar |
BR Engineering BR01 | 2:09.188 | +10.632 |
15 | Nelson Panciatici Ho-Pin Tung David Cheng |
Alpine A460 | 2:09.638 | +11.082 |
16 | Jonny Kane Nick Leventis Danny Watts |
Gibson 015S | 2:09.742 | +11.186 |
17 | Ricardo Gonzalez Filipe Albuquerque Bruno Senna |
Ligier JS P2 | 2:09.885 | +11.329 |
18 | Ryan Dalziel Pipo Derani Chris Cumming |
Ligier JS P2 | 2:10.668 | +12.112 |
19 | Devi Markozov Nicolas Minassian Maurizio Mediani |
BR Engineering BR01 | 2:10.989 | +12.433 |
20 | Scott Sharp Ed Brown Johannes van Overbeek |
Ligier JS P2 | 2:11.529 | +12.973 |
21 | Gianmaria Bruni James Calado |
Ferrari 488 GTE | 2:18.494 | +19.938 |
22 | Jonathan Adam Richie Stanaway Fernando Rees |
Aston Martin Vantage V8 | 2:18.967 | +20.411 |
23 | Davide Rigon Sam Bird |
Ferrari 488 GTE | 2:19.219 | +20.663 |
24 | Nicki Thiim Marco Sorensen Darren Turner |
Aston Martin Vantage V8 | 2:19.424 | +20.868 |
25 | Billy Johnson Olivier Pla Stefan Mücke |
Ford GT '16 | 2:19.964 | +21.408 |
26 | Emmanuel Collard Rui Aguas François Perrodo |
Ferrari F458 Italia | 2:20.130 | +21.574 |
27 | Andy Priaulx Marino Franchitti Harry Tincknell |
Ford GT '16 | 2:20.395 | +21.839 |
28 | Mike Wainwright Adam Carroll Ben Barker |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:20.397 | +21.841 |
29 | Pedro Lamy Paul Dalla Lana Mathias Lauda |
Aston Martin Vantage V8 | 2:20.893 | +22.337 |
30 | Richard Lietz Michael Christensen |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:21.150 | +22.594 |
31 | Paolo Ruberti Yutaka Yamagishi Pierre Ragues |
Chevrolet Corvette C7 GT3 | 2:21.411 | +22.855 |
32 | Christian Ried Joel Camathias Wolf Henzler |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:21.758 | +23.202 |
33 | Khaled Al Qubaisi David Heinemeier Hansson Patrick Long |
Porsche 911 RSR | 2:22.784 | +24.228 |
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