Mark Webber fastest in Le Mans 24 Hours free practice for Porsche

Webber's #17 car topped the timesheets after coming out on top in a duel with the #19 Porsche of Nick Tandy just after the halfway point in the four-hour session.

Tandy had taken the #19 car back over from Earl Bamber after the Kiwi got out of shape at the first Mulsanne chicane and got the car stuck in the gravel.

Romain Dumas also beat last year's pole-position time, set by Toyota's Kazuki Nakajima, with 22 minutes remaining and moved ahead of Webber in the process.

But Dumas had to cut the first part of the final chicane on his quickest lap in avoidance of a GTE Ferrari, which resulted in a stewards' investigation and the time being deleted shortly after the end of the session.

Audi's Loic Duval prevented a Porsche lockout of the top three spots, getting ahead of the #19 car with a lap squeezed in between the resumption after a red flag and the second of two brief rain showers that interfered with teams' plans.

The #7 and #9 Audis kept 2014 WEC champion Toyota locked out of the top six, with the #1 car of Anthony Davidson leading the second TS040 entry, as neither car got within three seconds of the pace at the front.

All three Nissan GT-R LM NISMOs set times within one second of each other, lapping roughly 19 seconds off the pace and locking out positions 12-14 on the overall leaderboard, with the #21 car of Tsugio Matsuda heading the trio.

KCMG's ORECA-Nissan 05 stopped on track during the opening minutes, but ended practice comfortably fastest in LMP2 and ahead of the three Nissan LMP1s.

A water-pressure problem caused the car to crawl to a halt on its outlap and spend 90 minutes in the garage, but Richard Bradley moved to the top with a 3m41.422s lap within 10 minutes of reappearing.

Bradley improved to a 3m39.897s - two seconds faster than LMP2's test-day benchmark an - shortly afterwards, and finished the session 1.414 seconds clear at the top.

A late run from Laurens Vanthoor took OAK Racing's Honda-powered Ligier to second, ahead of the Thiriet by TDS Racing and Greaves Motorsport entries.

Mark Patterson caused a long red flag when he crashed the Murphy Prototypes ORECA 03R at the Porsche Curves, heavily damaging the car and leading to barrier repairs.

Aston Martin Racing headed both of the GTE categories comfortably.

A series of quick laps from Richie Stanaway culminated in a 3m55.895s, and put the #99 Vantage more than 1.5s clear of the #64 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R.

Tommy Milner's lap in the Pratt & Miller-run Chevy put him between the top two Astons, with Stefan Mucke third quickest in the #97 'art car'.

The lead Porsche was fourth, Patrick Pilet fractionally slower than Mucke, while Davide Rigon's 3m59.653s put the #71 Ferrari 458 Italia best of the AF Corse cars in sixth.

The Italian was slower than the pace-setting GTE Am Aston Martin, which Pedro Lamy guided to a 3m58.783s.

The Portuguese's effort left the #98 Aston almost three seconds clear of the Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR driven by Patrick Long.

FREE PRACTICE TIMES