The 2024 GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup season begins with the Brands Hatch Free Practice and under the beautiful sun that illuminated the English track, Boutsen VDS’s Mercedes takes the record, putting the Emil Frey Racing Ferraris in line.
The 60′ of activity on the track was briefly interrupted when Valentino Rossi went off the track after half an hour; a harmless cover-up, fortunately, for the Team WRT representative, who, going slightly wide after the ‘Dingle Dell’ curve, grazed the wet grass, turning and stopping in the gravel with the BMW #46, leaning with his nose against the barriers without reporting damage.
“I’m sorry for the mistake I made, unfortunately I arrived a little too fast at Turn 7 and hit the grass, which being wet and covered in mud made it impossible to control the car,” explained Rossi.
“I ended up in the gravel and picked up a lot of it, but luckily there was no damage. I apologize to the team and also to Maxime, who won’t be able to drive in this session; we don’t have much time to prepare, but right from the start the feeling It wasn’t bad with the car, even if there’s still a bit of work to do on the balance.
#46 Team WRT, BMW M4 GT3: Valentino Rossi
Photo by: SRO
Another scare was experienced by Thomas Fleming in the 43rd minute, skidding out of the ‘Westfield’ in his Ferrari #71 and ending up several meters sideways on the grass, tearing the external barriers with his rear, causing a second interruption.
At that moment the classification already saw Mercedes #9 in the lead thanks to the time of 1’22″956 set by Jules Gounon, with his teammate Maximilian Gotz who tried to improve, but in vain.
Behind the AMG pair were the 296s of Green/Lappalainen (#14) and Altoè/Vermeulen (#69), the former trailing by just 0″002, the latter by 0″051 in a very short ranking as always, given that in the space of 1″ we find 14 cars.
Team WRT, having lost the #46 for the rest of the session (we find it in 15th place), consoles itself with the good 4th time obtained by Weerts/Vanthoor at the wheel of the #32 M4, while in the Top5 there is also Goethe/Gamble’s McLaren #159 (Garage 59).
With the sixth time +0″3 from the leader, Evrard/Magnus achieved the best of the Gold Cup Class at the wheel of the Audi #25 of Saintéloc Racing, keeping three PRO cars behind them such as the Mercedes #48 of Engel/Auer (Winward Racing) and the Tresor Attempto Racing Audis driven by Aka/Feller (#99) and Ferrari/Haase (#88).
After having been at the top of the standings for a long time, in the end the Ferrari 296 #71 of AF Corse of the aforementioned Fleming and Eliseo Donno drops to tenth place overall, but with the lead of the Silver Cup Class in its hands, beating the Mercedes #10 of Panis /Gazeau (Boutsen VDS) and, further behind, the BMW #30 of Williams/De Haan (Team WRT).
To complete the virtual Gold Cup podium we have to get up to 13th place overall, where there is the Audi #111 of Legeret/Gachet (CSA Racing), second of the lot ahead of that of Hofer/Engstler (#6 Team Engstler by One Group).
The fastest Aston Martin is the #7 of Drudi/Baert (Comtoyou Racing) in 12th place with 0″8 behind. Porsche only 22nd with the #96 of Muller/Niederhauser (Rutronik Racing), Paverud/Kell bring up the rear behind the wheel of GSM’s Lamborghini #18.
Pre-Qualifying is scheduled for 12.55pm, while the two Qualifying sessions to establish the starting lineups for Race 1 and 2 on Sunday will be held starting at 5.10pm.
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