Reigning Sprint Cup champions Belgian Audi Club Team WRT have begun the 2018 Blancpain GT Series season on top, with their #1 car of Christopher Mies and Alex Riberas setting the pace in opening practice at Zolder.
It was not a trouble-free session for the Baudour-based squad, however, with reigning Sprint Cup drivers’ champion Stuart Leonard causing a red flag when he made contact with the tyre barriers. The #17 Audi R8 LMS he shares with Robin Frijns ended the session in P16, though the damage to their car appeared minimal.
Second quickest was the Sainteloc Racing machine of Markus Winkelhock and Nyls Stievenart, with their #26 Audi R8 LMS just 0.085s shy of the Mies-Riberas car. Third spot was occupied by the #19 Grasser Racing Lamborghini Huracan of Ezequiel Perez-Companc and Andrea Caldarelli, who were within a tenth of a second of top spot themselves. The top five was completed by the #11 Kessel Racing Ferrari and the #66 Attempto Racing Audi.
Indeed, there was less than a second between the top 14 cars in free practice 1, suggesting that a highly competitive weekend of racing is in store at Zolder.
As well as Leonard’s incident, a second red flag was caused late on when the #35 SMP Racing by AKKA ASP machine became beached in the gravel at turn 1. The Mercedes-AMG was quickly retrieved, allowing the session to end under green flag conditions.
Free practice 2 gets underway at 14.20 local time. The action heats up tomorrow with two qualifying sessions and the season-opening race, with a second race scheduled for Sunday. All of the weekend's on-track activity will be streamed live on the Blancpain GT Series website.
Free Practice 1 Result list