Fuji WEC: Kobayashi sets the pace in extended third practice

Following the disruption to Friday's running, which was marred by three red flags due to kerbs coming loose, Saturday morning's session was extended by 30 minutes.

Fernando Alonso held the upper hand in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid initially with a time of 1m25.180s, but when Kobayashi took over the #7 Toyota he set what proved to be the quickest lap of the session, a 1m24.589s.

Alonso's FP2 benchmark of 1m23.973s remains the quickest time of the weekend so far, however.

SMP Racing regained its mantle of top privateer thanks to a late time of 1m25.675s from Egor Orudzhev in the #17 BR Engineering BR1-AER - a little over a second off the pace set by Toyota.

That was enough to beat the best of the Rebellion R-13-Gibsons, the #1 car of Neel Jani, by four tenths.

The Silverstone-winning #3 Rebellion occupied third for much of the session, but ended up fifth with Gustavo Menezes just four hundredths behind squadmate Jani.

Jenson Button set the #11 SMP BR1's best time, which was only good enough for sixth, ahead of DragonSpeed's customer Gibson-powered BR1.

The ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01-Nissan was eighth and last of the LMP1s, James Rossiter's best time coming in more than a second adrift of the DragonSpeed BR1.

DC Racing, Porsche top classes

Jackie Chan DC Racing led the way in LMP2 thanks to a 1m29.352s effort by Jazeman Jaafar in the #37 Oreca, the quickest time of the weekend so far in the secondary class.

Friday pacesetter TDS Racing was second with Matthieu Vaxiviere at the wheel of the #28 Oreca, followed by the second Jota Sport-run Jackie Chan car, the #38 of Stephane Richelmi.

Porsche topped the timesheets in GTE Pro courtesy of a 1m36.851s effort from Kevin Estre in the #92 911 RSR.

Best of the rest was the #66 Ford GT of Harry Tincknell, just under two tenths behind, while the lead entries from Aston Martin (Marco Sorensen), Ferrari (Davide Rigon) and BMW (Tom Blomqvist) filled out the rest of the top five.

GTE Am was likewise topped by Porsche, with Ben Barker's benchmark time of 1m37.709s putting the #86 Gulf Racing car ahead of the two slowest GTE Pro cars overall.

The session was red-flagged just as the chequered flag was about to fall when the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin's fire extinguisher went off and came to a halt while Charlie Eastwood was at the wheel.

That was the only stoppage of an otherwise virtually incident-free session.

FP3 results:

Pos.	#	Drivers	Car	Class	Time	Gap
1	7	Kamui Kobayashi   Mike Conway   Jose Maria Lopez	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'24.589
2	8	Fernando Alonso   Kazuki Nakajima   Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050 Hybrid	LMP1	1'25.180	0.591
3	17	Stéphane Sarrazin   Matevos Isaakyan   Egor Orudzhev	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'25.675	1.086
4	1	Andre Lotterer   Bruno Senna   Neel Jani	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'26.073	1.484
5	3	Mathias Beche   Thomas Laurent   Gustavo Menezes	Rebellion R13	LMP1	1'26.102	1.513
6	11	Jenson Button   Vitaly Petrov   Mikhail Aleshin	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'26.379	1.790
7	10	Ben Hanley   James Allen	BR Engineering BR1	LMP1	1'26.515	1.926
8	4	Oliver Webb   Tom Dillmann   James Rossiter	ENSO CLM P1/01	LMP1	1'27.540	2.951
9	37	Nabil Jeffri   Weiron Tan   Jazeman Jaafar	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'29.352	4.763
10	28	Jean-Eric Vergne   François Perrodo   Matthieu Vaxiviere	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'29.582	4.993
11	38	Ho-Pin Tung   Stéphane Richelmi   Gabriel Aubry	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'29.749	5.160
12	31	Anthony Davidson   Pastor Maldonado   Roberto Gonzalez	Oreca 07	LMP2	1'29.857	5.268
13	29	Giedo van der Garde   Nyck de Vries   Frits van Eerd	Dallara P217	LMP2	1'30.752	6.163
14	36	Nicolas Lapierre   Pierre Thiriet   Andre Negrao	Alpine A470	LMP2	1'30.808	6.219
15	50	Romano Ricci   Erwin Creed   Keiko lhara	Ligier JSP 217	LMP2	1'32.068	7.479
16	92	Michael Christensen   Kevin Estre	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	1'36.851	12.262
17	67	Harry Tincknell   Andy Priaulx	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'37.031	12.442
18	95	Nicki Thiim   Marco Sorensen	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'37.045	12.456
19	71	Sam Bird   Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	1'37.170	12.581
20	82	Antonio Felix da Costa   Tom Blomqvist	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	1'37.176	12.587
21	66	Stefan Mücke   Olivier Pla	Ford GT	LMGTE PRO	1'37.445	12.856
22	51	James Calado   Alessandro Pier Guidi	Ferrari 488 GTE EVO	LMGTE PRO	1'37.565	12.976
23	91	Gianmaria Bruni   Richard Lietz	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE PRO	1'37.612	13.023
24	86	Michael Wainwright   Benjamin Barker   Thomas Preining	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'37.709	13.120
25	97	Maxime Martin   Alex Lynn	Aston Martin Vantage AMR	LMGTE PRO	1'37.716	13.127
26	81	Nick Catsburg   Martin Tomczyk	BMW M8 GTE	LMGTE PRO	1'37.730	13.141
27	77	Christian Ried   Matt Campbell   Julien Andlauer	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'37.833	13.244
28	88	Matteo Cairoli   Giorgio Roda  Satoshi Hoshino	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'37.965	13.376
29	54	Giancarlo Fisichella   Francesco Castellacci   Thomas Flohr	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'38.354	13.765
30	56	Jörg Bergmeister   Patrick Lindsey   Egidio Perfetti	Porsche 911 RSR	LMGTE AM	1'38.554	13.965
31	61	Matthew Griffin   Mok Weng Sun   Keita Sawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'38.622	14.033
32	70	Olivier Beretta   Eddie Cheever III   Motoaki Ishikawa	Ferrari 488 GTE	LMGTE AM	1'38.682	14.093
33	98	Pedro Lamy   Paul Dalla Lana   Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	1'38.966	14.377
34	90	Jonathan Adam   Salih Yoluc   Charles Eastwood	Aston Martin Vantage	LMGTE AM	1'39.366	14.777