The beautiful sun is shining on the Ardennes Circuit and already in the early hours of this morning the temperatures were close to 30°C, which is rather anomalous for this area.
The 90′ session was interrupted by some red flags due to the exits of Mateo Llarena (Lamborghini #19), Jef Machiels (Ferrari #52) and Thomas Drouet (Mercedes #9) in turn 9.
With all the teams trying to put together a good number of laps to also understand the behavior of the cars and tires on a surface which in some places has new asphalt, the best time was set by the Mercedes #48 designed by Mann Filter thanks to the 2’15″234 for Lucas Auer, preceding Schumacher’s CLRT Porsche #22 by 0″227, with GetSpeed’s AMG #2 finishing third in the wake of the 911.
Following we have a trio of Audis led by the #28 of Haas RT, while the #88 of Tresor Attempto completes the Top5 and is first in the Gold Cup, keeping behind its sister #66 which stands out among the Bronzes, finishing at 0″345 from the summit.
Very short ranking given that in just one second there are 35 cars out of 66 participants. Good seventh time for the Aston Martin #7 of Comtoyou Racing, which precedes three Bronze Cup cars, namely the Porsche #80 of Lionspeed faster than the 296 GT3.
#22 Schumacher CLRT Porsche 911 GT3 R (992): Dorian Boccolacci, Ayhancan Güven, Laurin Heinrich
Photo by: SRO
The official ones of AF Corse-Francorchamps Motors are in fact in 22nd place (#71) and 35th (#51), the latter blocked by the last red flag while it was improving.
At Lamborghini, the Huracan #163 of GRT placed 16th at 0″661 from the leader, the first of the BMWs was the #98 of Rowe Racing with the 18th time, while that of Rossi/Martin/Marciello finished 27th.
To complete the Gold Cup discussion, second place was taken by the Mercedes #77 of HRT and third by the Audi #111 of CSA Racing, beating the R8 #25 of Saintéloc and the Mercedes of 2 Seas Motorsport #60 and Al Manar Racing #777.
The Silver Cup cars are back in the overall ranking: the lead goes to the Audi #26 of Saintéloc with a narrow margin compared to the Mercedes of Winward Racing #57 and Boutsen VDS #10.
Finally, the PRO/AM Class sees the McLaren #100 of Team RJN in the lead, followed by the Porsche #61 of EBM and the Mercedes of Uno Racing/Landgraf #16, Crowdstrike by Riley #4 and Triple Eight #888.
The Pre-Qualifying sessions are scheduled for 4.30pm, lasting 60 minutes.
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