GT1 World, Portimao - Friday Practice Report

Where other race series around Europe were hit by bad weather, the FIA GT1 World Championship at Portimao wasn’t affected by rain at all. The two free practice sessions were held in perfect weather conditions.

As expected the second Sunred Ford GT is again missing and Valmon Racing Team Russia is also missing here in Portugal. The result is a grid of 15 cars that lined up for the first session on Friday morning.

In that first session it was the AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia of Toni Vilander and Filip Salaquarda that was the fastest. For most of the session a Vita4One Racing Team BMW had been the quickest, but on its 23rd lap in the session the Ferrari managed to improve that time. With a 1:44.508 Vilander was seven tenths quicker than Buurman. Marc Basseng was third fastest in the All-Inkl.com Münnich Motorsport Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3.

During the second free practice session the wind increased in strength and most teams were unable to improve their lap times from session 1. Peter Kox and Milos Pavlovic were first and second, both drivers improving the lap times set in the first session. In between sessions the Sunred team worked on the gearbox of its Ford GT and Pavlovic showed that the car is still capable of setting fast lap times - it lacks reliability though. Filip Salaquarda was the third fastest driver in the AF Corse Ferrari.

At the end of the second session first and twelfth were separated by just 1.026s.

For Exim Bank Team China it has been a difficult day so far. In Free Practice 1 the two Porsches finished 14th and 15th and only completed a handful of laps. In the second session the #8 Porsche of Lunardi and Lariche didn’t complete a lap, whilst the #9 of Parisy and Zuber only managed to take 13th.