Porsche edged out Audi at the top of the timesheets in opening free practice for this weekend’s World Endurance Championship finale in Bahrain.

Timo Bernhard ended up fastest in the #17 Porsche on a 1m42.800s, which was just 0.017s quicker than Andre Lotterer aboard the #7 Audi R18 e-tron quattro.

The #8 Audi was third fastest with a 1m43.403s from Lucas di Grassi.

Romain Dumas ended up just five hundredths behind with a 1m42.454s, which put him fourth position aboard the second Porsche.

Bernhard, Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley lead the championship by 12 points from the Audi trio Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler going into Saturday’s six-hour race

The pair of Toyota TS040 HYBRIDs were fifth and sixth, with Sebastien Buemi leading the way on a 1m45.371s in the #1 car.

The top two cars in LMP2 were separated by just three hundredths of a second.

Nelson Panciatici set the class pace in the Signatech Alpine ORECA-Nissan 03R with a 1m52.054s, which compared with Sam Bird’s 1m52.086s in the best of the G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan JSP2s.

The AF Corse Ferrari squad was one-two in GTE Pro, with Toni Vilander’s 2m00.135s bettering Davide Rigon’s best in the sister 458 Italia by just under four tenths.

Aston Martin Racing led the way in GTE Pro with the Vantage GTE driven by Pedro Lamy.

FP1 TIMES