Toyota once again demonstrated their dominance in FP3 at the 1000 Miles of Sebring at teams prepared for qualifying. Elsewhere, Ford were fastest in GTE Pro and three Porsches topped the time sheets in GTE Am
José María López was once again the fastest man for Toyota, improving his best lap time by a further 0.3 seconds to 1:41.448 in FP3. Second-fastest in the sessions was Spaniard Fernando Alonso in the sister #8 car.
The fastest privateer car in LMP1 was the #10 DragonSpeed BR1 after an impressive lap of 1:44.156 by Dutchman Renger van der Zande.
Fastest in GTE Pro was the #67 Ford GT of Priaulx/Tincknell/Bomarito, which topped FP3 after finishing second-quickest in both FP1 and FP2. Andy Priaulx set the fastest time for the car, a 1:57.730, which improved the fastest time in the class so far by another six hundreds of a second.
The pair of factory Porsche 911 RSRs rounded off the top three in class but were just three tenths off the fastest time posted by the Ford GT.
The fastest man in LMP2 was Frenchman Gabriel Aubry for the #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing machine. His quickest lap of 1:48.353 was around half a second slower than the times set in FP1 and FP2, possibly due to track temperatures being some 10°C hotter than during the previous day’s running. The #36 Signatech Alpine Matmut car and the #29 Racing Team Nederland Dallara were second- and third-fastest respectively.
Porsche locked out the top three positions in GTE Am, with Julien Andlauer going fastest by some considerable distance with a 1:58.54 – a time almost one second quicker than was seen in FP1 and FP2. Second-fastest was the sister #88 Dempsey-Proton Racing 911 RSR. Jörg Bergmeister gave Team Project 1 something to smile about after their travails at Sebring International Raceway by going third-quickest.
Paul Dalla Lana, on the other hand, gave his Aston Martin Racing team some work to do ahead of qualifying. Driving the #98 Vantage, the Canadian misjudged his braking into Sunset Bend and hit the tyre barriers, resulting in a full-course yellow period.