Fuji WEC: Toyota takes 1-2 in disrupted first practice

The 90-minute session was halted with one hour and 12 minutes to go due to debris on the main straight, with officials then taking the chance to repair a loose kerb.

That meant a delay of 32 minutes before the session resumed, and a 30-minute extension to the morning's running was announced shortly afterwards.

Up to that point, the fastest time was a 1m25.847s by Buemi in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, which was 0.534 seconds quicker than Kamui Kobayashi's best effort in the sister #7 car.

Neither of the Toyotas registered an improvement after the red flag, with Fernando Alonso taking over the #8 from Buemi but not beating the Swiss driver's time.

Leading the privateer charge was SMP Racing, as Jenson Button set a succession of personal best laps after the resumption of the session to take third in the #11 BR Engineering BR1-AER.

The 2009 Formula 1 champion's best time of 1m26.890s was fractionally more than a second off the pace, although the car appeared to suffer a brake problem in Vitaly Petrov's hands later in the session.

Rebellion Racing was fourth and fifth with its pair of Gibson-powered R-13s, with Neel Jani in the #1 machine leading Mathias Beche in the #3 car, which took victory at Silverstone after Toyota's double exclusion.

Stephane Sarrazin put the #17 SMP BR1 in sixth ahead of the customer DragonSpeed BR1-Gibson, while the solo ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan rounded out the LMP1 order.

TDS leads LMP2, Ford on top in GTE

TDS Racing's Matthieu Vaxiviere set the quickest time in the LMP2 class, a 1m30.360s, to go a quarter of a second faster than Stephane Richelmi in the quicker of the Jota Sport-run Jackie Chan DC Racing Orecas.

Toyota LMP1 reserve Anthony Davidson was third-quickest in the #31 DragonSpeed Oreca.

GTE Pro was led by Ford, despite a recent Balance of Performance change aimed at slowing the Ganassi-run GTs and the Porsche 911 RSR.

Stefan Mucke set the best time in the #66 car, followed by the #91 Porsche of Gianmaria Bruni and the #92 machine of Michael Christensen.

Ferrari, whose 488 GTE Evo was not affected by the latest round of BoP changes, was best of the rest in fifth behind the second of the Fords thanks to a late improvement by James Calado in the #51 car.

Aston Martin's top Vantage GTE was sixth, one place ahead of the leading BMW M8 GTE.

Porsche led the way in GTE Am for much of the session after an early flyer from Dempsey-Proton driver Matt Campbell, but he was beaten in the closing stages by works Aston Martin driver Pedro Lamy's lap of 1m39.763s.

First practice results:

Pos.	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Time	Gap
1	8	Fernando Alonso   Kazuki Nakajima   Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'25.847
2	7	Kamui Kobayashi   Mike Conway   Jose Maria Lopez	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'26.381	0.534
3	11	Jenson Button   Vitaly Petrov   Mikhail Aleshin	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'26.890	1.043
4	1	Andre Lotterer   Bruno Senna   Neel Jani	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'27.151	1.304
5	3	Mathias Beche   Thomas Laurent   Gustavo Menezes	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'27.554	1.707
6	17	Stéphane Sarrazin   Matevos Isaakyan   Egor Orudzhev	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'27.635	1.788
7	10	Ben Hanley   James Allen	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'29.088	3.241
8	4	Oliver Webb   Tom Dillmann   James Rossiter	ENSO CLM P1/01	LMP1	1'29.250	3.403
9	28	Jean-Eric Vergne   François Perrodo   Matthieu Vaxiviere	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'30.360	4.513
10	38	Ho-Pin Tung   Stéphane Richelmi   Gabriel Aubry	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'31.605	5.758
11	31	Anthony Davidson   Pastor Maldonado   Roberto Gonzalez	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'31.705	5.858
12	29	Giedo van der Garde   Nyck de Vries   Frits van Eerd	Dallara P217	LMP2	1'31.708	5.861
13	36	Nicolas Lapierre   Pierre Thiriet   Andre Negrao	Alpine A470	LMP2	1'31.926	6.079
14	37	Nabil Jeffri   Weiron Tan   Jazeman Jaafar	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'31.965	6.118
15	50	Romano Ricci   Erwin Creed   Keiko lhara	Ligier JSP 217	LMP2	1'34.342	8.495
16	66	Stefan Mücke   Olivier Pla	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'38.555	12.708
17	91	Gianmaria Bruni   Richard Lietz	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	1'38.819	12.972
18	92	Michael Christensen   Kevin Estre	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	1'38.996	13.149
19	67	Harry Tincknell   Andy Priaulx	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'39.387	13.540
20	51	James Calado   Alessandro Pier Guidi	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	1'39.420	13.573
21	95	Nicki Thiim   Marco Sorensen	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'39.422	13.575
22	82	Antonio Felix da Costa   Tom Blomqvist	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	1'39.626	13.779
23	71	Sam Bird   Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	1'39.660	13.813
24	81	Nick Catsburg   Martin Tomczyk	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	1'39.715	13.868
25	98	Pedro Lamy   Paul Dalla Lana   Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	1'39.763	13.916
26	77	Christian Ried   Matt Campbell   Julien Andlauer	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'39.925	14.078
27	97	Maxime Martin   Alex Lynn	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'40.125	14.278
28	90	Jonathan Adam   Salih Yoluc   Charles Eastwood	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	1'40.139	14.292
29	88	Matteo Cairoli   Giorgio Roda   Satoshi Hoshino	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'40.232	14.385
30	86	Michael Wainwright   Benjamin Barker   Thomas Preining	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'40.469	14.622
31	61	Matthew Griffin   Mok Weng Sun   Keita Sawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'40.694	14.847
32	56	Jörg Bergmeister   Patrick Lindsey   Egidio Perfetti	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'40.787	14.940
33	70	Olivier Beretta   Eddie Cheever III   Motoaki Ishikawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'40.870	15.023
34	54	Giancarlo Fisichella   Francesco Castellacci   Thomas Flohr	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'40.980	15.133