> BMW Team Studie beat GruppeM in GT4 scrap
> Result: FP2
HubAuto Corsa’s Tim Slade moved to the top of the timesheets in second practice at Ningbo this afternoon after a combination of familiarisation and new tyre runs saw lap times tumble across the board
The Australian’s Ferrari, which he shares with Morris Chen, finished one place higher than at the end of the day’s earlier practice session courtesy of a 1m42.126s. That was 1.4s faster than Raffaele Marciello’s FP1 benchmark and 0.6s clear of FFF Racing’s two championship-chasing Lamborghinis.
Marco Mapelli led team-mate Dennis Lind in #63 and #19 respectively, while Marciello settled for fourth aboard the first of GruppeM’s two Mercedes-AMGs.
Nick Foster and Jono Lester were next up aboard the second of HubAuto’s 488s, albeit 0.8s shy of their front-running Antipodean team-mate, while Absolute Racing’s Martin Rump and Franky Cheng were once again the best-placed Audi crew in sixth.
Absolute’s second R8 shared by Andrew Kim and Adderly Fong beat Patric Niederhauser and Nico Bastian to seventh, although the GruppeM crew will be relieved to have laps under their belts after missing all of the first session with a technical issue. That will be especially important for Niederhauser who heads into tomorrow’s qualifying and first race 12 points behind championship leaders Kodric and Lind.
In GT4, BMW Team Studie and GruppeM’s championship-chasing crews once again finished-two, albeit in a different order. This time it was Sunako Jukuchou and Takayuki Kinoshita who finished quickest thanks to the latter’s 1m54.677s, which proved 0.6s faster than the Mercedes-AMG shared by Reinhold Renger and Ryuichirou Ohtsuka.
M Motorsport’s Justin McMillan, who races solo this weekend, helped the KTM finish third quickest ahead of Team iRace.Win’s Mercedes-AMG and BMW Team Studie M4.
Saturday’s packed schedule begins with final practice at 09:00 followed by qualifying and Race 1. Watch it live on the championship’s Faceboook page and website, On.cc in Hong Kong, and across China via the dedicated streaming services listed below.
Huya: https://www.huya.com/880206
Douyu: http://www.douyu.com/bgtsa
Panda: https://www.panda.tv/2231774
Sina: http://video.sina.com.cn/l/p/1724636.html
SMG Live: http://t.cn/E7ctiqm