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Brendon Hartley ensured a practice clean sweep for Toyota with a 1m31.795s lap of the Algarve International Circuit aboard the #8 machine, but was only 0.189s clear of James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 499P LMH.
The Briton’s 1m31.984s had briefly put his AF Corse-run entry 0.053s ahead of Hartley, before the three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner responded to reinstate his advantage.
Kamui Kobayashi was 0.278s slower than Hartley in the sister #7 Toyota, but over half a second clear of the #94 Peugeot 9X8 LMH which managed a best time of 1m32.738s in Nico Muller’s hands.
The #94 machine was later embroiled in an incident at the Turn 5 hairpin when Gustavo Menezes dived inside Memo Rojas’s Signatech-run Alpine ORECA-Gibson 07 and tapped the Mexican into a spin.
Rojas suffered a left-rear pun …