Conway leads Toyota 1-2 in Silverstone WEC FP1

Mike Conway led Toyota to a one-two finish in the opening FIA World Endurance Championship practice session for the 6 Hours of Silverstone on Friday afternoon, edging out Sebastien Buemi by two-tenths of a second at the head of the field.

Two months on from its maiden victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota arrived at Silverstone eager to continue its perfect start to the season despite tweaks made to the regulations in a bid to draw its non-hybrid LMP1 closer.

Toyota sent out an early warning shot to the privateer teams by sweeping to a one-two finish in a truncated opening practice at Silverstone, the session being interrupted by two red flags and extended by 15 minutes to make up for track time.

Following a red flag period lasting over half an hour after a crash for Rebellion Racing's Bruno Senna at Copse, Conway was able to get out quickly and turn in a best lap time of 1m39.916s to give the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid top spot in the final timesheets.

Conway was followed by Buemi, who set the pace in the sister #8 Toyota shared with Kazuki Nakajima and Formula 1 star Fernando Alonso, finishing 0.275s down in second place.

Rebellion took P3 and P4 despite Senna's crash, with the #3 R13 Gibson car finishing one second back from Conway's fastest time in third place. Senna's lap prior to his crash left him fourth overall, although the team was left with a decent amount of repairs to complete on his car ahead of second practice later today.

A second red flag was shown late in the session after ByKolles' Rene Binder stopped on the Wellington Straight due to an issue, with race control reporting that oil had been dropped on the track by the stricken car.

TDS Racing led the way in LMP2 through Loic Duval in the #28 Oreca 07 Gibson, who finished seven-tenths of a second clear of the #38 Jackie Chan DC Racin engry in P2, with the #36 Signatech Alpine Matmut car taking third in class.

Ford swept to a one-two finish in GTE-Pro, its charge led by Stefan Mücke in the #66 Ford GT as he finished six-tenths of a second clear of the team's #67 car, with Porsche's #91 911 RSR taking third in class.

Porsches set the pace in GTE-Am as the Dempsey-Proton Racing customer team took a one-two finish, the #88 car heading the pack through Matteo Cairoli ahead of the sister #77 entry.