Alonso Quickest in Silverstone FP3

Photo: Toyota

Fernando Alonso took the No. 8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid to the top of the timesheets in Saturday morning’s Free Practice 3 for the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Six Hours of Silverstone.

The Spaniard posted a best lap time of 1:37.677 on his second lap in the 60-minute session, improving by almost one second over Toyota Gazoo Racing’s pace on Friday.

The No. 7 Toyota, which was fastest in both FP1 and FP2, was classified fourth overall with the pair of SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1 AERs between the hybrid cars.

Stephane Sarrazin set a 1:39.326 to put the No. 17 SMP car 1.6 seconds down on the lead Toyota, while Mikhail Aleshin was third. 

The pair of Rebellion R13 Gibsons were fifth and sixth, followed by DragonSpeed and ByKolles Racing.

Both the No. 1 Rebellion and ByKolles ENSO CLM P1/01 NISMO, which had incidents in FP1, returned to the track this morning after missing FP2.

TDS Racing set the pace in LMP2 with a time of 1:44.247 while Ford Chip Ganassi Racing held a 1-2 in GTE-Pro ahead of an improved showing for Aston Martin Racing with its No. 95 car in third.

The British team topped GTE-Am with an early quick lap from Pedro Lamy, meanwhile.

The session was red-flagged and ended with three minutes remaining for debris on the track at Becketts.

Qualifying will get underway at 12 p.m. local time.

RESULTS: Free Practice 3

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.