Spa WEC: Toyota tears up form book to lead FP2

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