Timo Bernhard picked up where he left off at the end of 2015 by topping the timesheets for Porsche in first practice for the 6 Hours of Silverstone on Friday.
Bernhard arrives at the FIA World Endurance Championship opener sharing the no. 1 car with Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley after the trio won the drivers’ championship in Bahrain last year.
Porsche enjoyed a significant edge over the WEC field throughout 2015, and showed few signs of slowing down in a damp first practice at Silverstone.
Webber set the early pace in the 919 Hybrid car, only for Hartley and Bernhard to both go faster still during their runs.
With less than five minutes remaining in the session, Bernhard produced a lap of 1:42.182 seconds to beat Hartley’s time by half a second and claim P1 in the final timesheets.
Marc Lieb followed in the sister Porsche, finishing eight-tenths of a second adrift in second place, while Anthony Davidson finished as the best of the rest in the new Toyota TS050 Hybrid in third place, 1.5 seconds down on P1.
Oliver Jarvis led Audi’s charge in fourth place, two-tenths of a second further back from Davidson, while the no. 6 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin followed in P5 ahead of the second Audi.
In LMP2, Rene Rast set the pace in his first official practice outing with defending class champions G-Drive as the Russian outfit led from Signatech Alpine’s no. 35 entry and the debutant RGR Sport by Morand Ligier in P3.
Manor enjoyed a solid first outing at Silverstone, with Roberto Merhi finishing fourth in class in FP1. The British team completed 47 laps between its two cars in the 90 minute session, offering some much-needed mileage heading into the rest of the weekend.
AF Corse led the way in GTE Pro courtesy of James Calado in the no. 51 Ferrari 488 GTE, heading up a one-two for the Italian marque ahead of the no. 71 of Davide Rigon and Sam Bird. AF Corse also led in GTE Am, with the no. 83 458 Italia edging out the no. 86 Gulf Racing entry for P1 in class by less than one-tenth of a second.
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