Practice report
WEC Silverstone
Silverstone WEC: Porsche dominates opening practice of 2016
Porsche dominated the opening practice session of the 2016 World Endurance Championship season, as Timo Bernhard set the pace in the #1 919 Hybrid.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Apr 15, 2016, 4:04 PM
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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:
PosDriverTeamCarTimeGap 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
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