Le Mans 24 Hours warm-up: Kobayashi's Toyota fastest by a second

A late improvement from Kobayashi produced a 3m19.647s that was 1.042s faster than the #8.

Until then, the Kobayashi/Jose Maria Lopez/Mike Conway car had been just 0.007s quicker than Sebastien Buemi's best effort in the second TS050.

New Toyota reserve Thomas Laurent, who was confirmed as a Signatech-Alpine LMP2 race driver for 2019/20 on Friday, placed the #3 Rebellion Racing machine third.

Laurent had a slight off at one of the Mulsanne chicanes midway through the session before setting his best time of 3m21.868s, which was just over two seconds off the leading Toyota's best lap.

The two SMP Racing BRE-AER BR1s took fourth and fifth, with the #17 entry beating the sister car courtesy of Stephane Sarrazin's 3m21.869s lap time.

Vitaly Petrov gave the #1 SMP machine its best time of 3m22.813s.

The #10 DragonSpeed BRE-Gibson BR1 was sixth ahead of the #1 Rebellion, with both cars setting their best laps in the final moments of the session.

Ben Hanley gave DragonSpeed the edge in that battle with his 3m23.735s and lapped almost three seconds clear of Bruno Senna's Rebellion benchmark.

Rebellion was conducting its running after both cars had made engine changes following qualifying.

There was one notable LMP1 mistake during the warm-up, which came when Tom Dillmann locked-up under braking for the Dunlop chicane, crossing the gravel and the run-off on the outside of the corner before rejoining.

His ByKolles ENSO CLM-Gibson P1/01 would finish ninth overall, behind the leading LMP2 car, due to its 3m28.935s lap.

LMP2 - Vergne on top

Jean-Eric Vergne set the fastest LMP2 time early in the session in the #26 G-Drive Racing ORECA, 1.4s clear of TDS Racing stablemate and polesitter Loic Duval.

Vergne, who qualified fifth, managed a best time of 3m28.763s, 2.5s slower than his qualifying lap from Thursday night.

Nicolas Lapierre took third late in the session in the #36 Signatech Alpine to complete an all-ORECA top three, bumping Nigel Moore's Inter Europol Competition Ligier down to fourth.
Two cars did not set a representative time, with IDEC Sport and RLR M Sport both electing to save machinery for the race.

GTE - Porsche quickest

Porsches were fastest in both GTE classes, with Kevin Estre putting the works #92 car on top in the Pro division by a little more than a second.

Estre's fastest time, a 3m50.095s, was just over two seconds shy of the fastest GTE Pro qualifying time, and 1.001s off the time that put the #92 car seventh on the grid.

Harry Tincknell leapt the #67 Ford GT he shares with Andy Priaulx and Jonathan Bomarito up to second with a 3m51.133s lap with 10 minutes to go, and had been fastest of all through the first split on his next lap before a full-course yellow was issued.

The #71 and #51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTEs had occupied third and fourth in the closing stages of the session, but were split late on by the #68 Ford GT thanks to Dirk Muller's 3m51.637s lap.

Darren Turner put the class polesitting #95 Aston Martin Vantage GTE sixth, ahead of the lead BMW of Antonio Felix da Costa, who was 1.797s off the pace in his #82 M8 GTE.

The #63 and #64 Corvettes were 15th and 16th respectively in the Pro order, ahead only of the #94 Porsche.

Ben Barker put the Gulf Racing Porsche on top in GTE Am, his 3m54.071s leaving the #86 car 1.270s clear of the similar Team Project 1 911 RSR.

Warm-up times