Hunter Abbott and Raffaele Marciello led a GruppeM Mercedes-AMG one-two in final practice for this weekend’s inaugural Blancpain GT Series Asia round at Sepang.
Marciello’s best of 2m03.328s was more than half-a-second faster than team-mate and leading Silver Cup entrant Jules Szymkowiak, as well as two tenths below the previous benchmark set by KCMG’s Martin Rump yesterday afternoon.
Spirit of Race’s Ferrari duo were next up, Massimiliano Wiser ending up 0.6s shy of Marciello and just 0.021s faster than team-mate Rui Aguas, while Ho-Pin Tung was a tenth further back in the first of FFF Racing Team by ACM’s Lamborghini Huracan GT3s.
Anthony Liu Xu and Davide Rizzo’s BBT-entered 488 GT3 completed the top-six ahead of Mitch Gilbert and Aditya Patel in the first of four Audis. Yesterday’s pace-setting R8 LMS GT3 finished eighth in the hands of Rump and Sanghwi Rick Yoon, with Phoenix Racing Asia pairings Alex Au/Alex Young and Marchy Lee/Shaun Thong completing the top-six.
KCMG’s Naoto Takeda and Takuya Shirasaka were the fastest all-Am crew. The Japanese pair’s Audi was just over a second faster than their nearest rivals, X-One Racing’s Andrew Haryanto and Vincent Wong.
Elsewhere, EKS Motorsports’ Byron Tong Siu Kau and Eric Lo Piu topped the GT4 times. Their best of 2m19.891s was 1.2s faster than Jean-Marc Merlin and Frank Yu could muster aboard their Craft-Bamboo Racing Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport MR.
Qualifying beings at 10:40 local time, while the very first Blancpain GT Series Asia race gets underway at 15:10.