Shanghai WEC: Hartley keeps Porsche on top in final practice

The Kiwi outpaced the sister Porsche driven by Marc Lieb as teams simulated qualifying runs before concentrating on race pace in the second half of the 90-minute session.

Hartley, Webber and Bernhard hold a one-point advantage over Audi’s Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler as they head into qualifying.

Audi was second with the #7 entry driven by Treluyer, 0.7s up on Loic Duval in the #8 R18 e-tron quattro.

The #7 Audi started the session on old tyres and completed its qualifying simulation, much later than its rivals. The gap between Audi and Porsche for qualifying appears to be around the two second mark.

Toyota Racing continued to annex the fifth and sixth positions with Sebastien Buemi heading Alex Wurz in the pair of Toyota TS 040 HYBRID LMP1 cars

The session saw one Full Course Yellow, which was deployed after twenty minutes when Julien Canal crashed his G-Drive Ligier on the quick right-hander coming onto the back straight. The Frenchman clattered the wall on the inside, damaging the front left corner and rear deck of the car.

While there was frustration for that side of the G-Drive garage, there was satisfaction in the other as Pipo Derani claimed the fastest lap in the #28 car. The Brazilian set a best lap of 1m52.453s to head the Strakka Gibson of Danny Watts by a huge margin of 1.6s.

Ferrari led both of the GT classes with Gianmaria Bruni enjoying a clear lead in the Pro class with the AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia he shares with Toni Vilander. The rapid Italian had a 0.421s gap over the #92 Porsche Team Manthey 911 RSR driven by Frederic Makowiecki.

Makowiecki's teammate Patrick Pilet took over for the final 25 minutes of the session and survived a collision with Pierre Kaffer’s CLM P1/01 LMP1 car.

The LMGTE Am class had the SMP Racing Ferrari hold an advantage. Surprisingly, it was the team's Bronze-categorised driver Aleksey Basov who posted the fastest lap of 2m04.688s. The Russian’s time was a couple of tenths up on Pat Long’s in the Dempsey-Proton Porsche.

Practice results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap
1	Mark Webber  Brendon Hartley  Timo Bernhard	Porsche Team	Porsche 919 Hybrid	1:42.799	1:42.799
2	Marc Lieb  Romain Dumas  Neel Jani	Porsche Team	Porsche 919 Hybrid	1:43.919	+1.120
3	Andre Lotterer  Benoit Tréluyer  Marcel Fassler	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi R18 e-tron quattro '15	1:44.956	+2.157
4	Loic Duval  Oliver Jarvis  Lucas di Grassi	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi R18 e-tron quattro '15	1:45.645	+2.846
5	Anthony Davidson  Kazuki Nakajima  Sébastien Buemi	Toyota Racing	Toyota TS040 Hybrid	1:46.365	+3.566
6	Alexander Wurz  Mike Conway  Stéphane Sarrazin	Toyota Racing	Toyota TS040 Hybrid	1:46.530	+3.731
7	Alexandre Imperatori   Mathéo Tuscher  Dominik Kraihamer	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion R-One	1:49.321	+6.522
8	Pipo Derani  Gustavo Yacaman  Ricardo Gonzalez	G-Drive Racing	Ligier JS P2	1:52.453	+9.654
9	Pierre Kaffer  Simon Trummer	Team ByKolles	CLM P1/01	1:53.940	+11.141
10	Jonny Kane  Nick Leventis  Danny Watts	Strakka Racing	Gibson 015S	1:54.054	+11.255
11	Matthew Howson  Nick Tandy  Richard Bradley	KCMG	ORECA 05	1:54.245	+11.446
12	Nelson Panciatici  Paul-Loup Chatin   Tom Dillmann	Signatech Alpine	Alpine A450b	1:54.398	+11.599
13	David Heinemeier Hansson Ryan Dalziel  Scott Sharp	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier JS P2	1:54.459	+11.660
14	Roman Rusinov  Sam Bird  Julien Canal	G-Drive Racing	Ligier JS P2	1:54.477	+11.678
15	Ed Brown  Jon Fogarty  Johannes van Overbeek	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier JS P2	1:55.809	+13.010
16	Oliver Webb  Chris Cumming  Pierre Ragues	Team SARD Morand	Morgan LMP2 Evo '15	1:55.892	+13.093
17	Alex Brundle  Ho-Pin Tung  David Cheng	Pegasus Racing	Morgan LMP2	1:57.231	+14.432
18	Toni Vilander  Gianmaria Bruni	AF Corse	Ferrari F458 Italia	2:02.747	+19.948
19	Frédéric Makowiecki  Patrick Pilet	Porsche Team Manthey	Porsche 911 RSR	2:03.168	+20.369
20	Davide Rigon  James Calado	AF Corse	Ferrari F458 Italia	2:03.177	+20.378
21	Alex MacDowall  Richie Stanaway  Fernando Rees	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:03.434	+20.635
22	Richard Lietz  Michael Christensen	Porsche Team Manthey	Porsche 911 RSR	2:03.561	+20.762
23	Jonathan Adam  Darren Turner	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:04.482	+21.683
24	Aleksey Basov  Andrea Bertolini  Viktor Shaitar	SMP Racing	Ferrari F458 Italia	2:04.688	+21.889
25	Patrick Long  Patrick Dempsey  Marco Seefried	Dempsey Racing - Proton	Porsche 911 RSR	2:04.899	+22.100
26	Pedro Lamy  Paul Dalla Lana  Mathias Lauda	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:05.355	+22.556
27	Gianluca Roda  Paolo Ruberti   Nicolai Sylvest	Larbre Compétition	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	2:05.908	+23.109
28	Emmanuel Collard  Rui Aguas  François Perrodo	AF Corse	Ferrari F458 Italia	2:06.087	+23.288
29	Liam Griffin  Francesco Castellacci  Stuart Hall	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin Vantage V8	2:06.612	+23.813
30	Khaled Al Qubaisi  Christian Ried  Klaus Bachler	Abu Dhabi-Proton Racing	Porsche 911 RSR	2:07.572	+24.773
31	Mathias Beche  Nicolas Prost	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion R-One	2:09.011	+26.212