Mattia Drudi led the way in this evening's free practice 2 at Misano with a last-gasp effort at the wheel of his #55 Attempto Racing Audi. The local driver posted a 1m32.189s lap with barely a minute left to the clock to beat long-time leader Dries Vanthoor (#32 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT) by 0.047s.
Drudi headed an ultra-close 80-minute session, which saw the top-18 cars covered by less than a second and only half a second between the top 15. After the pace-setting Audis, the impressive Thomas Neubauer was third quickest in the #15 Tech 1 Racing Lexus, which also emerged as the best Silver Cup car.
Next came the #25 Sainteloc Racing Audi, the #4 HRT Mercedes-AMG, the #107 CMR Bentley and the #26 Sainteloc Audi. The #88 AKKA ASP Mercedes-AMG shared by Timur Boguslavskiy and FP1 leader Raffaele Marciello could only manage eighth this evening.
As was the case in the earlier session, the Pro-Am class was topped by Andrea Bertolini. The Italian ace was 11th overall in the #52 AF Corse Ferrari he shares with Louis Machiels. Full session times can be viewed via the link at the bottom of this page.
Once again, several cars received penalties for repeatedly violating track limits. The #89 AKKA ASP Mercedes-AMG was the first to do so and duly took its third 10-minute stop-go of the day. Seven other cars were subject to the same punishment.
The only red flag was caused by the #90 Madpanda Motorsport Mercedes-AMG of Ezequiel Perez Companc, who made contact with the barriers at turn six. The car was fifth overall and fastest in the Silver Cup class at the time, but ultimately fell to the middle of the order. A total of 22 cars took part in the session, with the #2 TokSport WRT Mercedes-AMG now officially withdrawn from the event following a fire during FP1.
Action resumes tomorrow morning at 09.00 with an 80-minute pre-qualifying run. This will be the final preparation before a pair of qualifying sessions, which run back-to-back from 13.20. These will set the grids for the opening two races, the first of which begins at 19.15 and concludes just as the sun sets. At 09.00 on Sunday another qualifying session will run, establishing the grid for the weekend's third race. Race two gets underway at 11.20, while the final contest starts at 15.00.
From Saturday afternoon's qualifying onwards, all sessions will be streamed live on the GT World Challenge Europe website and Facebook pages, as well as the GT World YouTube channel.