Rebellion closes out final Spa WEC practice fastest

Neel Jani led Rebellion Racing to the head of the field in the final practice session for this weekend's FIA World Endurance Championship season-opener at Spa as Toyota failed to match its pace from Thursday's running.

Driving the #1 Rebellion R13 Gibson, Jani turned in a fastest lap time of 1:57.120 to finish eight-tenths of a second clear of Toyota's Mike Conway, building momentum for the LMP1 privateer heading into qualifying this afternoon.

Toyota finished more than two seconds clear of the field in practice on Thursday, but backed off through FP3 to leave Conway P2 overall in the #7 TS050 Hybrid, with the sister #8 car finishing down in fifth place.

However, both cars ran more than a second slower than their times from FP2, and never converted fast sector one times into a lap quick enough to beat Jani's effort, suggesting they were backing off through the final two sectors.

The #3 Rebellion entry finished third overall ahead of the #17 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1, with Fernando Alonso taking fifth in the #8 Toyota alongside Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima.

Alonso got in his final laps ahead of qualifying later today, where he is aiming for his first pole position in motorsport since the 2012 Formula 1 German Grand Prix.

Ex-F1 racer Pastor Maldonado topped LMP2 for the third straight session at Spa behind the wheel of the #31 DragonSpeed Oreca 07 Gibson, finishing two-tenths clear of G-Drive Racing's Jean-Eric Vergne. Nabil Jeffri took P3 in class in the #37 Jackie Chan DC Racing entry.

GTE-Pro saw Ford continue to lead the way through Andy Priaulx in the #67 Ford GT, edging out Stefan Mücke in the sister #66 Ford by just 0.04 seconds come the chequered flag. BMW took P3 via Tom Blomqvist in the #82 BMW M8 GTE.

In GTE-Am, Dempsey-Proton racing surged to a one-two finish, headed up by Matt Campbell in the #77 Porsche 911 RSR, with his best lap time being 0.176s faster than that of Matteo Cairoli in the #88 Porsche.

Qualifying takes place at 3pm local time in Spa.