> Team Studie make home advantage count
> Result: FP1
Marco Holzer made the perfect start to his Blancpain GT World Challenge Asia debut by topping the times in first practice at Suzuka today.
With Panther/AAS Motorsport’s usual pro, Alex Imperatori, competing at the Nurburgring 24 Hours this weekend, the team have drafted in Porsche factory ace Holzer to partner title protagonist Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak. And the German announced himself immediately by claiming top spot after just eight minutes despite having never previously visited Suzuka.
His 2m02.134s displaced last year’s Suzuka race winner Martin Rump by just 0.079s after Audi Sport Asia by Absolute Racing’s Estonian made the early running.
Absolute-entered cars filled the top-four places courtesy of Philip Hamprecht and Franky Cheng whose Porsche and Audi finished 0.345s and 0.5s shy of Holzer.
HubAuto Corsa’s Ferrari shared by Andre Heimgartner and local star Yuya Sakamoto finished fifth, while Chris van der Drift’s JRM Porsche completed the top-six.
Meanwhile, BMW Team Studie deployed their local knowledge en route to fastest GT4 time. Sunako Jukuchou was never headed after setting three laps quick enough for first, the last of which was a 2m15.861s.
Tony Fong and Bryan Lee’s GTO Racing with TTR Mercedes-AMG finished best of the rest in second, albeit 1.5s behind the BMW, while Craft-Bamboo’s Frank Yu and Jean-Marc Merlin were another 0.4s further behind.
Friday’s second practice session begins at 16:10.