Silverstone WEC: Porsche dominates opening practice of 2016

With the session starting a damp track, times quickly tumbled as conditions improved, the #1 Porsche of Mark Webber and the sister #2 of Romain Dumas trading quickest times early on.

Neel Jani then moved to the top of the timesheets after taking over from Dumas, the Swiss driver leading at halfway before being demoted by Brendon Hartley in the #1.

With just under half an hour to go, Hartley had worked his way down to a 1m42.642s, which looked like being the best time of the session until Bernhard lowered the bar to a 1m42.182s in the dying stages.

That was just 0.060s shy of last year's FP1 benchmark, and put the #1 car 0.814s clear of Marc Lieb's best effort for the #2.

Toyota came out on top in the battle to be best of the rest behind the Porsche duo, Anthony Davidson setting the Japanese marque's best time of 1m43.765s late on in the #5 TS050 Hybrid.

Fourth place went to Oliver Jarvis in the best of the Audis, only two tenths back, with the #6 Toyota, whose best time was set by Mike Conway, and the #7 Audi of Benoit Treluyer some distance behind.

ByKolles came out on top in the LMP1-L battle, James Rossiter's best time being 6.6s off the pace and two seconds clear of the best of the LMP2s, the #26 G-Drive Racing Oreca.

Rene Rast ended up top of the timesheets in the secondary class with a 1m50.428s, beating the Signatech Alpine of Nelson Panciatici by 0.8s and Filipe Albuquerque's RGR Sport by Morand Ligier by a second.

Ferrari sweeps GTE classes

First blood in the GTE Pro category went to Ferrari, Gianmaria Bruni setting the fastest time in class in the #51 488 GTE of 2m01.067s. 

Davide Rigon was second in the sister #71 car, 1.2s back, with Michael Christensen the best of the non-Ferraris in the #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche.

Ferrari also topped the GTE Am class, courtesy of the #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Rui Aguas, whose best time was a 2m04.093s.

Practice results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap
1	Mark Webber  Brendon Hartley  Timo Bernhard	Porsche Team	Porsche 919 Hybrid '16	1:42.182
2	Marc Lieb  Romain Dumas  Neel Jani	Porsche Team	Porsche 919 Hybrid '16	1:42.996	+0.814
3	Anthony Davidson  Kazuki Nakajima  Sébastien Buemi	Toyota Racing	Toyota TS050 HYBRID	1:43.765	+1.583
4	Loic Duval  Oliver Jarvis  Lucas di Grassi	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro '16	1:43.917	+1.735
5	Kamui Kobayashi  Mike Conway  Stéphane Sarrazin	Toyota Racing	Toyota TS050 HYBRID	1:45.936	+3.754
6	Andre Lotterer  Benoit Tréluyer  Marcel Fassler	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro '16	1:46.496	+4.314
7	James Rossiter  Oliver Webb  Simon Trummer	ByKOLLES Racing Team	CLM P1/01	1:48.860	+6.678
8	Roman Rusinov  René Rast  Nathanael Berthon	G-Drive Racing	ORECA 05	1:50.428	+8.246
9	Alexandre Imperatori  Matheo Tuscher  Dominik Kraihamer	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion R-One	1:50.500	+8.318
10	Nelson Panciatici  Ho-Pin Tung  David Cheng	Baxi DC Racing Alpine	Alpine A460	1:51.278	+9.096
11	Ricardo Gonzalez  Filipe Albuquerque  Bruno Senna	RGR Sport by Morand	Ligier JS P2	1:51.425	+9.243
12	Roberto Merhi  Matt Rao  Richard Bradley	Manor	ORECA 05	1:51.792	+9.610
13	Vitaly Petrov  Kirill Ladygin  Viktor Shaytar	SMP Racing	BR Engineering BR01	1:51.918	+9.736
14	Jonny Kane  Nick Leventis  Danny Watts	Strakka Racing	Gibson 015S	1:52.159	+9.977
15	Scott Sharp  Ed Brown  Johannes van Overbeek	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier JS P2	1:52.191	+10.009
16	Nicolas Lapierre  Gustavo Menezes  Stéphane Richelmi	Signatech	Alpine A460	1:52.651	+10.469
17	Ryan Dalziel  Pipo Derani  Chris Cumming	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier JS P2	1:52.831	+10.649
18	Tor Graves  Will Stevens  James Jakes	Manor	ORECA 05	1:53.278	+11.096
19	Nelson Piquet Jr.  Nick Heidfeld  Nicolas Prost	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion R-One	1:53.535	+11.353
20	Nicolas Minassian  Maurizio Mediani	SMP Racing	BR Engineering BR01	1:54.072	+11.890
21	Gianmaria Bruni  James Calado	AF Corse	Ferrari 488 GTE	2:01.067	+18.885
22	Davide Rigon  Sam Bird	AF Corse	Ferrari 488 GTE	2:02.218	+20.036
23	Richard Lietz  Michael Christensen	Dempsey-Proton Racing	Porsche 911 RSR	2:02.378	+20.196
24	Billy Johnson  Olivier Pla  Stefan Mücke	Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK	Ford GT '16	2:02.675	+20.493
25	Andy Priaulx  Marino Franchitti  Harry Tincknell	Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK	Ford GT '16	2:02.887	+20.705
26	Emmanuel Collard  Rui Aguas  François Perrodo	AF Corse	Ferrari F458 Italia	2:04.093	+21.911
27	Mike Wainwright  Adam Carroll  Ben Barker	Gulf Racing UK	Porsche 911 RSR	2:04.176	+21.994
28	Khaled Al Qubaisi  David Heinemeier Hansson Klaus Bachler	Abu Dhabi-Proton Racing	Porsche 911 RSR	2:04.344	+22.162
29	Pedro Lamy  Paul Dalla Lana  Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:04.622	+22.440
30	Paolo Ruberti  Yutaka Yamagishi  Pierre Ragues	Larbre Compétition	Chevrolet Corvette C7 GT3	2:05.110	+22.928
31	Richie Stanaway  Fernando Rees	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:05.142	+22.960
32	Nicki Thiim  Marco Sorensen  Darren Turner	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:05.828	+23.646
33	Christian Ried   Joel Camathias  Wolf Henzler	KCMG	Porsche 911 RSR	2:05.959	+23.777