Toyota Back on Top in FP3 in Shanghai

Photo: James Moy/Toyota

Toyota Gazoo Racing has returned to form, with Kamui Kobayashi topping Free Practice 3 in Shanghai.

Kobayshi reeled off a 1:47.184 early in the 60-minute session, on a suspected qualifying simulation run, to outpace the LMP1 competition by a full second.

His time was 1.009 seconds quicker than the No. 5 Team LNT Ginetta G60-LT-P1 AER of Egor Orudzhev, who was second, a half-second faster than the sister No. 6 Ginetta, which topped the time charts on Friday.

The No. 1 Rebellion R13 Gibson was fourth, some 2.2 seconds down from the pace-setting Toyota in the session.

An incident between Bruno Senna and the No. 54 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE of Francesco Castellacci ultimately brought the session to an early end with 3 minutes to go.

Both cars returned to the pits damaged although debris remained on the track, resulting in a session-ending red flag.

The No. 29 Racing Team Nederland Oreca 07 Gibson of Nyck de Vries topped LMP2 with the fifth quickest time overall.

The top five LMP2 cars were all quicker than the No. 8 Toyota, which ended up 10th quickest on the time charts.

GTE-Pro was paced by the No. 92 Porsche 911 RSR of points leader Michael Christensen, while the No. 56 Team Project 1 Porsche of Matteo Cairoli continued to set the pace in GTE-Am.

Qualifying gets underway at 2 p.m. local time.

RESULTS: Free Practice 3

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John