Le Mans 24h: FP4 headed by #8 Toyota from Alpine
Alpine split the Toyotas in the final practice ahead of this weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours, the blue riband round of the World Endurance Championship.
Paul Foster
Nicolas Lapierre got within three tenths of Kazuki Nakajima's time-topping Toyota during the fourth period of free practice that followed the Hyperpole qualifying session.
Nakajima set the pace from the beginning of Thursday evening's night session in the #8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID, ending up on a 3m27.994s.
Lapierre posted an improvement with 40 minutes to go, getting down to a 3m28.280s aboard the Alpine-Gibson A480.
Pole winner Kamui Kobayashi improved to a 3m29.567s late in the session but remained third in the #7 Toyota.
Ryan Briscoe ended up fastest of the two Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 LMHs with a 3m30.309s.
Franco Colapinto took LMP2 honours in the G-Drive Racing's lead entry.
The Argentinian took the top spot with 3m31.414s set early in the session aboard his Aurus-badged ORECA-07 Gibson.
That put him nearly half a second up on Job van Uitert's 3m31.862sin the TDS-run Racing Team Nederland ORECA.
Filipe Albuquerque claimed third spot for United Autosports ahead of Gabriel Aubry's Panis Racing-run PR1 Mathiasen ORECA.
#26 G-Drive Racing Aurus 01 - Gibson LMP2, Roman Rusinov, Franco Colapinto, Nyck De Vries
Photo by: Paul Foster
Laurens Vanthoor, older brother of class pole winner Dries, led the way in GTE Pro for the privateer WeatherTech Racing Porsche squad.
The Belgian's 3m48.246s aboard the Proton-run WeatherTech Porsche 911 RSR put him a second clear of Gianmaria Bruni in the only factory Porsche to take part in the session.
Bruni's 3m49.334s had leapfrogged him to the top of the times ahead of the two Chevrolet Corvette C8.Rs halfway through the session.
Antonio Garcia ended up third with a 3m49.406s ahead of Alexander Sims, who was just behind on 3m49.684s.
The pole-winning HubAuto Porsche claimed fifth in Maxime Martin's hands ahead of the two AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evos.
GTE Am honours went to the AF Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen, who was just over a tenth up on Optimum-run Inception Racing Ferrari in Ben Barnicoat's hands.
The session was halted 15 minutes before its two-hour duration was complete when Ollie Millroy put the Inception Ferrari in the barriers at the Ford Chicane.
Fifty-eight of the 62 cars entered for the race took part in FP4.
Those missing included the #92 factory Porsche crashed by Kevin Estre during Hyperpole qualifying.
Track action resumes at Le Mans at 1130 local time with the 15-minute warm-up session ahead of the 1600 race start of the 89th edition of the 24 Hours.
Le Mans 24 Hours - FP4 results
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