Shanghai WEC: Toyota heads rain-affected first practice
Toyota locked out the top two spots in a rain-affected opening practice session for this weekend's Shanghai FIA World Endurance Championship round.
#8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota TS050: Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima, Fernando Alonso
JEP / Motorsport Images
SMP Racing's Jenson Button, fresh from winning the Super GT title last weekend in Motegi, led the majority of the session after setting a time of 2m00.369s in the #11 BR Engineering BR1-AER around 25 minutes into the session.
That stood as the benchmark until the two Toyota TS050 Hybrids equipped intermediate tyres with a little over 10 minutes to go as the track dried, the start of a late frenzy of improvements.
Sebastien Buemi in the #8 Toyota demolished Button's benchmark with a 1m57.987s, and subsequently dropped into the 1m56s before finally ending the session with a best time of 1m54.768s.
That was enough to beat Jose Maria Lopez in the sister #7 car by 1.586s, with the best of the privateers ending up a full 4s down.
Tom Dillmann briefly put the #4 ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan third-fastest as the track improved but in the end it was the #17 SMP Racing BR1 piloted by Egor Orudzhev that ended up best of the rest.
Rebellion's top entry was the #3 Gibson-powered R-13, fifth-fastest in the hands of Thomas Laurent, ahead of the #1 Rebellion of Bruno Senna and Vitaly Petrov in the #11 SMP BR1.
The #10 DragonSpeed BR1 did not profit from the drying track and slipped not only to last in the LMP1 field, 12s off the pace, but also behind the entire LMP2 contingent.
A late reshuffle in LMP2 resulted in Jackie Chan DC Racing topping its class, thanks to a late 2m02.923s lap from Jazeman Jaafar in the Fuji race-winning #37 Oreca 07.
Formula 2 racer Nyck de Vries put the Racing Team Nederland Dallara second, six tenths down, followed by the returning Loic Duval in the TDS Racing Oreca.
Duval was forced to skip the Fuji round due to a clash with the Hockenheim DTM finale.
Only a handful of cars in GTE Pro improved late on, with the #81 BMW M8 GTE of Martin Tomczyk ending up top.
The former DTM champion's best time was 2m09.830s, putting him a massive three seconds clear of the next quickest car in the class, the #91 Porsche 911 RSR of Richard Lietz.
Alex Lynn put the best of the Aston Martin Vantage GTEs third, a further three tenths behind Lietz.
Corvette Racing's lone C7.R was seventh-fastest in the hands of Oliver Gavin, 3.4s down on Tomczyk's benchmark.
The TF Sport Aston Martin squad leapt to the top of the times in GTE Am at the end of the session, Charlie Eastwood's best effort of 2m11.764s putting the #90 Vantage second overall among the GTE cars.
WEC Shanghai, FP1
Pos. | # | Drivers | Car | Class | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 8 | Fernando Alonso Kazuki Nakajima Sébastien Buemi |
Toyota TS050 Hybrid | LMP1 | 1'54.768 | |
2 | 7 | Kamui Kobayashi Mike Conway Jose Maria Lopez |
Toyota TS050 Hybrid | LMP1 | 1'56.354 | 1.586 |
3 | 17 | Stéphane Sarrazin Matevos Isaakyan Egor Orudzhev |
BR Engineering BR1 | LMP1 | 1'58.880 | 4.112 |
4 | 4 | Oliver Webb Tom Dillmann James Rossiter |
ENSO CLM P1/01 | LMP1 | 1'58.919 | 4.151 |
5 | 3 | Mathias Beche Thomas Laurent Gustavo Menezes |
Rebellion R13 | LMP1 | 1'59.132 | 4.364 |
6 | 1 | Andre Lotterer Bruno Senna Neel Jani |
Rebellion R13 | LMP1 | 1'59.239 | 4.471 |
7 | 11 | Jenson Button Vitaly Petrov Mikhail Aleshin |
BR Engineering BR1 | LMP1 | 1'59.675 | 4.907 |
8 | 37 | Nabil Jeffri Weiron Tan Jazeman Jaafar |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 2'02.923 | 8.155 |
9 | 29 | Giedo van der Garde Nyck de Vries Frits van Eerd |
Dallara P217 | LMP2 | 2'03.551 | 8.783 |
10 | 28 | Loic Duval François Perrodo Matthieu Vaxiviere |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 2'04.282 | 9.514 |
11 | 38 | Ho-Pin Tung Stéphane Richelmi Gabriel Aubry |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 2'04.556 | 9.788 |
12 | 50 | Enzo Guibbert Romano Ricci Erwin Creed |
Ligier JSP 217 | LMP2 | 2'04.623 | 9.855 |
13 | 31 | Anthony Davidson Pastor Maldonado Roberto Gonzalez |
Oreca 07 | LMP2 | 2'04.803 | 10.035 |
14 | 36 | Nicolas Lapierre Pierre Thiriet Andre Negrao |
Alpine A470 | LMP2 | 2'06.714 | 11.946 |
15 | 10 | Renger van der Zande Ben Hanley James Allen |
BR Engineering BR1 | LMP1 | 2'06.847 | 12.079 |
16 | 81 | Nick Catsburg Martin Tomczyk |
BMW M8 GTE | LMGTE PRO | 2'09.830 | 15.062 |
17 | 90 | Jonathan Adam Salih Yoluc Charles Eastwood |
Aston Martin Vantage | LMGTE AM | 2'11.764 | 16.996 |
18 | 91 | Gianmaria Bruni Richard Lietz |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE PRO | 2'12.202 | 17.434 |
19 | 97 | Maxime Martin Alex Lynn |
Aston Martin Vantage AMR | LMGTE PRO | 2'12.568 | 17.800 |
20 | 92 | Michael Christensen Kevin Estre |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE PRO | 2'12.840 | 18.072 |
21 | 66 | Stefan Mücke Olivier Pla |
Ford GT | LMGTE PRO | 2'12.980 | 18.212 |
22 | 95 | Nicki Thiim Marco Sorensen |
Aston Martin Vantage AMR | LMGTE PRO | 2'13.012 | 18.244 |
23 | 64 | Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner |
Chevrolet Corvette C7R | LMGTE PRO | 2'13.182 | 18.414 |
24 | 51 | James Calado Alessandro Pier Guidi |
Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | LMGTE PRO | 2'13.414 | 18.646 |
25 | 77 | Christian Ried Matt Campbell Julien Andlauer |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 2'13.482 | 18.714 |
26 | 61 | Matthew Griffin Mok Weng Sun Keita Sawa |
Ferrari 488 GTE | LMGTE AM | 2'13.638 | 18.870 |
27 | 71 | Sam Bird Davide Rigon |
Ferrari 488 GTE EVO | LMGTE PRO | 2'13.745 | 18.977 |
28 | 67 | Harry Tincknell Andy Priaulx |
Ford GT | LMGTE PRO | 2'14.217 | 19.449 |
29 | 82 | Antonio Felix da Costa Tom Blomqvist |
BMW M8 GTE | LMGTE PRO | 2'14.391 | 19.623 |
30 | 98 | Pedro Lamy Paul Dalla Lana Mathias Lauda |
Aston Martin Vantage | LMGTE AM | 2'14.618 | 19.850 |
31 | 88 | Matteo Cairoli Riccardo Pera Khaled Al-Qubaisi |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 2'15.724 | 20.956 |
32 | 56 | Jörg Bergmeister Patrick Lindsey Egidio Perfetti |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 2'15.803 | 21.035 |
33 | 70 | Olivier Beretta Eddie Cheever III Motoaki Ishikawa |
Ferrari 488 GTE | LMGTE AM | 2'15.856 | 21.088 |
34 | 86 | Michael Wainwright Benjamin Barker Thomas Preining |
Porsche 911 RSR | LMGTE AM | 2'15.914 | 21.146 |
35 | 54 | Giancarlo Fisichella Francesco Castellacci Thomas Flohr |
Ferrari 488 GTE | LMGTE AM | 2'16.129 | 21.361 |
Be part of Motorsport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments