WEC Spa: F1 racer Alonso fastest in first practice for Toyota

Alonso took over the #8 TS050 from team-mate Sebastien Buemi 35 minutes into the 90-minute session, and promptly set a best time of 1m58.392s.

No. 8 @Toyota_Hybrid TS050 HYBRID driven by @alo_oficial set the fastest lap during Free Practice 1 in 1.58.392. Let's get onboard! ?#WEC pic.twitter.com/atFMaEHGSo

— WEC (@FIAWEC) May 3, 2018

That lap was almost exactly a tenth faster than Buemi and put the McLaren F1 driver 0.237s ahead of the best time set in the #7 Toyota, which was produced by Mike Conway.

The best of the privateer LMP1s was the #3 Rebellion R-13-Gibson, which ended up with a time 0.457s off the pace set by Alonso in the hands of Thomas Laurent late in the session.

Laurent demoted the #10 DragonSpeed BR Engineering BR1-Gibson being driven by Ben Hanley to fourth, ahead of the #1 ORECA-built Rebellion car of Bruno Senna, whose best time was 1.2s slower than the best of the Toyotas.

The ByKolles squad was sixth-fastest with its revised ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan thanks to Tom Dillmann, a further half a second down.

SMP Racing only got its #17 BR1-AER out for a timed run in the closing stages of the session, and was seventh-fastest with Egor Orudzhev at the wheel.

The sister #10 car of Mikhail Aleshin was slower than best of the LMP2 runners, the DragonSpeed ORECA.

Pastor Maldonado set the best time in the secondary class, a 2m03.494s in the #31 ORECA 07-Gibson to go 0.640s faster than Andre Negrao in the Alpine-badged #36 Signatech ORECA.

Jean-Eric Vergne put G-Drive Racing's one-off ORECA entry third in class, less than a tenth further back, ahead of the two Jota Sport-run Jackie Chan DC Racing cars.

Manor failed to get either of its Ginetta G60-LT-P1-Mecachrome cars out for a timed lap, with both the #5 and #6 entries only managing a single installation lap.

Ford led a one-two in the GTE Pro division, with Andy Priaulx setting the best time in class on a 2m15.014s in the #67 GT ahead of Olivier Pla in the #66 machine.

WEC returnee Gianmaria Bruni was best of the rest in the #91 Porsche, albeit six tenths off the pace, followed by Kevin Estre in the #92 911 RSR.

The quickest of the updated Ferrari 488 GTEs was fifth, 1.3s off the pace in the hands of James Calado, while the best of the new BMW M8 GTE cars was sixth with Tom Blomqvist.

Aston Martin brought up the rear of the class with its pair of new-generation Vantages.

Porsche locked out the top four spots in the GTE Am division, led by Matteo Cairoli in the #88 Dempsey-Proton Racing entry on a 2m16.601s, which was good enough for sixth overall among the GTE contingent.

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