Jota’s Callum Ilott headed a tight final practice session for the World Endurance Championship’s Interlagos round with the top three split by less than a tenth.
Ilott headed a Porsche 963 LMDh clean sweep of the top three, his customer Jota car beating the two factory Porsche Penske Motorsport entries with a benchmark effort of 1m24.297s set shortly before the track was declared wet.
Conditions never deteriorated to the point that wet tyres were required, but Ilott’s time held to the end of the hour-long session.
Matt Campbell was just 0.012s slower than the winner of the WEC’s Spa 6 Hours earlier this year, while Kevin Estre was 0.093s behind in third.
Charles Milesi was fourth in the leading Alpine A424, clocking in 0.347s off the pace, fractionally ahead of Dries Vanthoor’s WRT-run BMW M Hybrid V8.
Daniil Kvyat’s Iron Lynx Lamborghini SC63 and Jenson Button in the second Jota Porsche completed an LMDh lockout of the top seven, with Le Mans winner Antonio Fuoco’s factory Ferrari 499P the top Le Mans Hypercar in eighth.
Robert Shwartzman in the customer AF Corse-run Ferrari was ninth, ahead of the #93 Peugeot 9X8 LMH in which Jean-Eric Vergne visited the Turn 1 run-off.
Mick Schumacher set the 11th fastest time in the second Alpine, which caused the session’s most noteworthy incident when Matthieu Vaxiviere spun Carl Wattana Bennett’s Isotta Fraschini Tipo6 at Turn 8.
#92 Manthey Purerxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R LMGT3: Aliaksandr Malykhin, Joel Sturm, Klaus Bachler
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
After heading the timesheets in Friday’s second practice, the two Toyota GR010 HYBRIDs were only 13th and 14th, with Nyck de Vries and Sebastien Buemi respectively setting the times aboard the #7 and #8 machines.
The LMGT3 times continued to tumble after the rain began to fall, with joint championship leader Alexander Malykhin ultimately setting the pace in the #92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R.
The bronze-rated driver posted two laps quick enough for the top spot, with his best effort of 1m35.488s putting him 0.062s quicker than Nico Pino’s United Autosports McLaren.
Sarah Bovy made it three different manufacturers in the top three positions with third in her Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan Evo2, 0.151s behind Malykhin, while Gregoire Saucy completed a strong session for McLaren with fourth in the second United entry.
Qualifying for Sunday’s Sao Paulo 6 Hours begins at 14:30 local time.