Both sessions prior to Sprint Cup qualifying at Brands Hatch have ended with the same result. Being indistinct the title granted, as free or pre-classification, in both training sessions the fastest driver was Raffaele Marciello with the #89 Mercedes of the Akkodis-ASP team. Also in both sessions, Jules Guonon has completed the double for the French structure with the #88 Mercedes. In fact, Jérôme Policand’s team even had three cars at the top of the timesheets in the first session of the weekend.
Raffaele Marciello started the first round of the Sprint Cup at a good pace with a 1:22.037 in the free practice session. He led the Italian by two tenths over his teammate Jules Gounon on the short British track, signing in any case between the two official Mercedes drivers the first Akkodis-ASP double of the day. And the deployment of the equipment did not even end there, since Thomas Drouet took the #87 Mercedes to third placeas the leader of the Silver Cup. The ‘top 5’ of the session was completed by the #33 Audi and the #53 Ferrari led by Ulysse de Pauw.
Dries Vanthoor has been in charge of taking the Audi #32, the GT3 of the champions, to sixth place in a session in which the best Pro-Am vehicle was the #78 Lamborghini from the Barwell Motorsport team. Although this first practice session has gone by with a somewhat calm script, several riders have gone off the track on the complex British track. Among them a Valentino Rossi with the Audi #46 that visited the exteriors of the curve ‘Graham Hill Bend’.
The leading actors repeated the script in the pre-classificationpoint by point. Raffaele Marciello took the best record of the session after setting a time of 1:21.889. For its part, Jules Gounon placed the Mercedes #88 in second position for the second time. On this occasion, third place went to Christopher Haase with the #11 Audi, while Dries Vanthoor took the #32 Audi to fourth position. Audi’s triplet within the ‘top 5’, as a great alternative to Mercedes, has been completed by Patric Niederhauser’s #25.
Beyond the leading drivers, Ben Barker’s performance with the #78 Lamborghini deserves a special mention of Barwell Motorsport after achieving a sixth place overall, in addition to comfortably leading the Pro-Am category in a pre-qualifying session that has been more eventful than the previous training session of the Sprint Cup. In fact, there have been a couple of red flagsone caused by the accident of Audi #99 and another due to Valentino Rossi leaving the track that forced the #46 Audi to be rescued from the gravel.
Photos: GT World Challenge Europe