Former Williams F1 driver Sergey Sirotkin paced the FIA WEC field in the first practice session of the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps.

The Russian managed a remarkable time of 1:56.264 towards the end of the 90-minutes of running in the #17 BR1 AER, which put him two seconds clear of the rest of the LMP1 field.

Notably, the time was two seconds faster than the team’s best Qualifying time from last year, in what was the first weekend for the BR1 in competition.

Behind the #17 in the times was the sister #11 SMP Racing BR1 AER, with a 1:58.236 from WEC debutant Stoffel Vandoorne, making it a 1-2 for the team.

The two Toyota Gazoo Racing TS050 HYBRIDs ended up third and fourth, 1.4 and 2.6 seconds adrift of Sirotkin’s time. It must be noted, however, that the pole time from last year, set by the #8 Toyota, was a 1.:54.9, meaning there’s plenty of time still to be found by the Japanese-flagged team.

Rebellion Racing, which this weekend is running its 2019 low-downforce aero package on its R-13s, managed a best time of 1:59.106 from the #3 car to go fifth.

In LMP2, Signatech Alpine led the way, Nicolas Lapierre setting a 2:03.441 in the team’s Michelin-shod A470. G-Drive Racing’s Aurus 01, on Dunlops, ended up second with a 2:03.677 from Jean-Eric Vergne.

The Racing Team Nederland Dallara completed the top three with a 2:04.349.

Remarkably, the top two in GTE Pro set identical times, the #97 Aston Martin Racing Vantage and #67 Ford Chip Ganassi Team UK GT ending the session with best times of 2:15.290, from Maxime Martin and Harry Tincknell respectively.

BMW Team MTEK’s #82 M8 GTE ended up two tenths off, third in the classification, ahead of the #66 Ford and #95 Aston Martin.

GTE Am was also tight, with the #86 Gulf Racing Porsche running quickest thanks to a 2:17.068 from Ben Barker. The top six in the class though ended up coming within a second of the Briton’s best tour.

FP2 at Spa is set to start later today at 16:25 local time.

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