Dylan Pereira set the fastest time in Friday night's Pre-Qualifying at Magny-Cours, posting his best lap at the very end of the 60-minute session to put Tresor Attempto Racing at the head of an unfamiliar order.
Heavy rainfall shortly before Pre-Qualifying made for tricky conditions at the French venue. As the surface dried the lap times began to tumble, resulting in a constant shuffling of the lead positions. Indeed, the benchmark dropped by more than 15 seconds over the course of the hour, while around 20 different cars spent time in P1.
Pereira posted a 1m40.837s on his final tour aboard the #66 Audi, knocking the #64 HRT Ford Performance entry driven by French youngster Roman Andriolo off the top. Andriolo responded, but came up four tenths short of Pereira's new benchmark. Nevertheless, this was comfortably the HRT-run Mustang's best showing of 2025.
The #66 Audi was one of five Bronze Cup cars among the overall top six. Lionspeed GP was third and fourth with its Porsches, driven by Bastian Buss and Ricardo Feller respectively, followed by Loris Spinelli in the #85 Imperiale Racing Lamborghini and Eddie Cheever in the Ziggo Sport Tempesta Ferrari.
Kelvin van der Line was the sole title contender at the front, finishing seventh overall at the wheel of the #32 Team WRT BMW. The top 10 was completed by three more Pro cars: the #14 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari, the #111 CSA Racing McLaren, and the #78 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini.
Ricky Collard was the best of the Gold Cup runners, placing 11th overall aboard the #76 Lamborghini to cap an encouraging session for the Barwell squad. The Silver Cup leader came next, with Kobe Pauwels finishing P12 in the #21 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin, which bagged its first class win of the season last time out at Misano.
Cars will be back on-track tomorrow at 14:45 CEST for Qualifying 1, which sets the grid for Race 1 at 20:30. Both sessions – as well as Sunday's action – will be streamed live on the GT World YouTube channel.
> RESULTS: Pre-Qualifying