> Results: Official Practice | Pre-Qualifying
Elias Seppänen set Friday’s pace at Okayama by topping Official Practice and remaining unbeaten throughout the afternoon’s Pre-Qualifying session.
The Finn’s time was impressive given the light drizzle that made for slippery conditions at the start of the session. Indeed, the Climax Mercedes-AMG reeled off its quickest time – 1m29.197s – on its final lap to move 0.095s clear of Laurin Heinrich and Origine’s 911 GT3 R.
Championship leader Alessandro Ghiretti came closest to Seppänen’s time, albeit in the afternoon session. His and Absolute Racing’s newly denim-liveried Porsche set a 1m29.276s to end up just under a tenth behind Friday’s benchmark and 0.1s clear of Team KRC’s BMW driven by Neil Verhagen.
However, Seppänen’s time wasn’t quite quick enough to claim fastest time of the week so far. That honour remains with 5ZIGEN and Atusushi Miyake courtesy of the Nissan’s 1m29.133s in Thursday’s second test.
Fastest time in the Bronze Test went the way of Plus with BMW Team Studie’s Tomohide Yamaguchi.
The M4 appears well suited to Okayama given the pace of KRC’s entries, which ended Official Practice third and fourth. Maxime Oosten beat team-mate Verhagen by more than four tenths before the American – who’s making his first appearance since Sepang – finished second overall behind Ghiretti this afternoon.
Absolute’s Klaus Bachler and Craft-Bamboo’s Liang Jiatong rounded out an Official Practice top six that featured three Silver-Am entries.
That session was suspiciously quiet for Audi, which then proved considerably stronger this afternoon when Jaxon Evans went third fastest for Phantom in Pre-Qualifying. DTM champion and Asia debutant Ayhancan Güven (Phantom Global), Brendon Leitch (Apex Predator Harmony Racing) and Oosten rounded out the first half-dozen.
GT World Asia qualifying begins at 09:00 tomorrow before the first of this weekend’s race starts at 13:00 JST (+9 GMT).