Buemi fastest in opening Fuji WEC practice

Sebastien Buemi set the pace for Toyota in opening practice for this weekend’s FIA World Endurance Championship round at Fuji Speedway, finishing almost half a second clear of co-driver Fernando Alonso on Friday.

Completing the opening stint of the 90-minute practice session behind the wheel of the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, Buemi managed to turn in a fastest lap of 1m25.847s that was not bettered before the end of the session.

Following a red flag period for track repairs that lasted half an hour, Buemi handed the reins of his car over to Formula 1 racer Alonso, who could only lap 0.488 seconds slower than his Swiss teammate’s benchmark.

Despite a tweak to the Equivalence of Technology regulations for Fuji in a bid to draw the privateer LMP1 teams closer to the Toyota hybrids, the Japanese manufacturer managed to clinch a one-two finish in FP1 as the #7 car finished second overall, Kamui Kobayashi finishing 0.534 seconds off Buemi’s time.

2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button finished third overall for SMP Racing and as the fastest non-hybrid driver in the #11 BR Engineering BR1 AER, one second down on Buemi and three-tenths of a second clear of the next-best privateer driver, Neel Jani in the #1 Rebellion R13 Gibson.

LMP2 saw Mathieu Vaxiviere set the pace for TDS Racing in the #28 Oreca 07 Gibson with a best time of 1m30.360s, finishing one second clear of Stephane Richelmi in the #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing entry. Anthony Davidson took P3 in class for DragonSpeed in the #31 Oreca.

Ford Chip Ganassi Racing led the way in GTE-Pro via Stefan Mücke in the #66 Ford GT as the German finished two-tenths of a second clear of Gianmaria Bruni in the #91 Porsche 911 RSR. Bruni was closely tailed by teammate Michael Christensen in the #92 Porsche, two-tenths of a second further back.

Pedro Lamy topped GTE-Am for Aston Martin Racing with a best lap of 1m39.763s, edging out Dempsey-Proton Racing’s Matt Campbell by one-tenth of a second.