Porsche has set the pace in the official pre-season FIA World Endurance Championship prologue test sessions at Paul Ricard in France.

Porsche’s new 919 Hybrid made an impressive debut in the FIA WEC and the team’s No.20 ended up as the fastest car overall in the hands of Timo Bernhard, Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley.

LM P1 rookie Hartley set the fastest time aboard the new Porsche.

“Operating as a Porsche works driver for the first time and in the top class of Le Mans Prototypes was an impressive experience,” the New Zealander said.

“Having topped the time sheets is certainly not the most important thing in our test programme, but personally for me it is the icing on the cake.“

In the final sessions on Saturday, only one car improved its best time from the past two days, the No.8 Toyota Racing TS040 Hybrid of Davidson-Lapierre-Buemi, but it was the No.2 Audi Sport Team Joest R18 e-tron quattro of Fässler-Lotterer-Tréluyer which set today’s fastest lap (1:43.423).

Porsche also set the pace in teh GTE-Pro class with the 911 RSR of new signing of Fred Makowiecki topping the timesheets on Friday afternoon with a time of 1:58.041.

The FIA WEC competitors attention now turns towards the 6 Hours of Silverstone, the opening round of the championship which takes place on Sunday, 20th April.

Click here to view full timing and scoring details…..

//youtu.be/2VklYdbnPOA

//youtu.be/chtFJc57bM0