By alley - Sep 17, 2015, 6:31 PM ET

WEC: Porsche leads first COTA practice

Romain Dumas (pictured) beat Porsche teammate Mark Webber to the top of the timesheets in opening free practice for this weekend's Austin round of the World Endurance Championship.

Dumas jumped ahead of Webber by just under a tenth of a second with 15 minutes to go with a 1m47.425s and then bettered it with a 1m47.231s aboard the #18 Porsche 919 Hybrid. That left him nearly three tenths up on Webber's best of 1m47.514s.

Oliver Jarvis set the best Audi time to take third spot with a 1m49.027s, almost 1.8s off the pace. The second Audi R18 e-tron quattro completed only four laps before undergoing an alternator change and ended up seventh in the times on a 1m53.471s recorded by Andre Lotterer.

Toyota took fourth and fifth spots with its pair of TS040 Hybrids, Sebastien Buemi's 1m51.279s putting him nine tenths clear of team-mate Mike Conway.

The KCMG squad led the way in LMP2 with a 1m57.764s lap from Nicolas Lapierre at the wheel of its ORECA-Nissan 05. That put him seven tenths up on the 1m58.342s set by Johannes van Overbeek in the best of the Extreme Speed Motorsports Ligier-Honda JSP2s. He was in turn just one hundredth up on the sister car in the hands of Ryan Dalziel.

James Calado set the pace in GTE Pro aboard his AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia. His 2m06.753s was six tenths up on Toni Vilander's best in the sister car, which stopped out on the circuit early in the session with an electronic problem.

AF was trying the same engine ECU that had failed early in the race at the Nurburgring last month to try to fully understand the problem. Patrick Pilet was only five thousandths behind the second Ferrari in the fastest of the two Manthey Porsche 911 RSRs.

Patrick Long was fastest for the Proton Porsche team in the GTE Am class.

PRACTICE ONE TIMES:

Pos	Class	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap
1	LMP1	R.Dumas, N.Jani, M.Lieb	Porsche Team	Porsche	1m47.231ss	1m47.231s
2	LMP1	T.Bernhard, M.Webber, B.Hartley	Porsche Team	Porsche	1m47.514ss	0.283s
3	LMP1	L.di Grassi, L.Duval, O.Jarvis	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi	1m49.027ss	1.796s
4	LMP1	A.Davidson, S.Buemi, K.Nakajima	Toyota Racing	Toyota	1m51.279ss	4.048s
5	LMP1	A.Wurz, S.Sarrazin, M.Conway	Toyota Racing	Toyota	1m52.180ss	4.949s
6	LMP1	M.Fassler, A.Lotterer, B.Treluyer	Audi Sport Team Joest	Audi	1m53.471ss	6.240s
7	LMP1	N.Prost, M.Beche, N.Heidfeld	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion/AER	1m55.844ss	8.613s
8	LMP1	S.Trummer, P.Kaffer	Team ByKolles	CLM/AER	1m56.545ss	9.314s
9	LMP2	M.Howson, R.Bradley, N.Lapierre	KCMG	ORECA/Nissan	1m57.764ss	10.533s
10	LMP2	E.Brown, J.van Overbeek, J.Fogarty	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier/HPD	1m58.342ss	11.111s
11	LMP2	S.Sharp, R.Dalziel, D.Hansson	Extreme Speed Motorsports	Ligier/HPD	1m58.353ss	11.122s
12	LMP2	N.Panciatici, P-L.Chatin, V.Capillaire	Signatech Alpine	Alpine/Nissan	1m58.735ss	11.504s
13	LMP2	N.Leventis, D.Watts, J.Kane	Strakka Racing	Dome/Nissan	1m58.770ss	11.539s
14	LMP1	A.Imperatori, D.Kraihamer, D.Abt	Rebellion Racing	Rebellion/AER	1m58.862ss	11.631s
15	LMP2	G.Yacaman, L.Derani, R.Gonzalez	G-Drive Racing	Ligier/Nissan	1m58.904ss	11.673s
16	LMP2	P.Ragues, O.Webb, A.Hamilton	Team SARD Morand	Morgan/SARD	1m59.489ss	12.258s
17	LMP2	R.Rusinov, J.Canal, S.Bird	G-Drive Racing	Ligier/Nissan	1m59.618ss	12.387s
18	GTE Pro	D.Rigon, J.Calado	AF Corse	Ferrari	2m06.753ss	19.522s
19	GTE Pro	G.Bruni, T.Vilander	AF Corse	Ferrari	2m07.353ss	20.122s
20	GTE Pro	P.Pilet, F.Makowiecki	Porsche Team Manthey	Porsche	2m07.410ss	20.179s
21	GTE Am	P.Dempsey, P.Long, M.Seefried	Dempsey Racing - Proton	Porsche	2m07.487ss	20.256s
22	GTE Pro	R.Lietz, M.Christensen	Porsche Team Manthey	Porsche	2m07.720ss	20.489s
23	GTE Pro	D.Turner, J.Adam	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m08.138ss	20.907s
24	GTE Am	G.Roda, P.Ruberti, K.Poulsen	Larbre Competition	Chevrolet	2m08.224ss	20.993s
25	GTE Pro	F.Rees, A.MacDowall, R.Stanaway	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m08.356ss	21.125s
26	GTE Am	F.Perrodo, E.Collard, R.Aguas	AF Corse	Ferrari	2m08.648ss	21.417s
27	GTE Pro	M.Sorensen, C.Nygaard	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m08.704ss	21.473s
28	GTE Am	V.Shaitar, A.Bertolini, A.Basov	SMP Racing	Ferrari	2m09.012ss	21.781s
29	GTE Am	P.D.Lana, P.Lamy, M.Lauda	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m09.519ss	22.288s
30	GTE Am	F.Castellacci, B.Simonsen, S.Hall	Aston Martin Racing	Aston Martin	2m09.804ss	22.573s
31	GTE Am	C.Ried, K.Al Qubaisi, E.Bamber	Abu Dhabi-Proton Racing	Porsche	2m10.858ss	23.627s