WEC Spa: Toyota edges Porsche in first practice session

Mike Conway led the way with a 1m57.940s set early in the 90-minute session aboard the #7 Toyota TS050 HYBRID.

That was nine tenths up on the best of the Porsche 919 Hybrids until the closing minutes when Brendon Hartley posted a 1m57.976s to close the gap between the two LMP1 manufacturers to just 0.036s.

The #1 Porsche took third spot on a 1m58.869s set by Neel Jani at the beginning of the 90 minutes.

The second of the Toyotas was just behind on a 1m58.914s from Sebastien Buemi.

Toyota's regular WEC entries are running in high-downforce configuration, while the Porsches are again in the low-downforce Le Mans 24 Hours set-up in which they raced at Silverstone last month.

The third Toyota, running in Le Mans spec, was fifth fastest in Stephane Sarrazin's hands on a 1m59.633s.

The Signatech Alpine squad ended up fastest in LMP1 courtesy of a 2m04.171s from Gustavo Menezes aboard its ORECA-Gibson 07.

That put the American just under a tenth up on Alex Lynn's 2m04.262s in the G-Drive Racing ORECA.

Manor driver Simon Trummer was in turn even a smaller margin behind in third with a 2m04.301s.

Ford just had the measure of Porsche in GTE Pro.

Andy Priaulx was fastest aboard the #67 Ganassi Ford GT on a 2m16.802s, which compared with Frederic Makowiecki's 2m16.924s in the #91 Porsche 911 RSR.

Matteo Cairoli was quickest in GTE Am for the Dempsey-Proton Porsche squad.

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