> Result: Official Practice
EBM Giga Racing’s Reid Harker set the pace in Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia Powered by AWS’s first official session at Sportsland SUGO this afternoon after repeatedly re-taking top spot from experienced local aces Seiji Ara and Tomonobu Fujii.
The Kiwi also survived a late assault by Jazeman Jaafar and Kei Cozzolino to end Official Practice just 0.024s ahead of Triple Eight JMR’s Mercedes-AMG, while CarGuy Racing’s Ferrari completed a top-three covered by half-a-tenth.
Ara and then Fujii both initially set fastest times before Harker made the first of his four appearances up front. Fujii’s D’station Racing Aston Martin responded twice more but was beaten on both occasions by the Porsche, which finally set the day’s benchmark – 1m21.586s – just after BMW Team Studie’s M4 had returned to the top a little after the hour mark.
That looked to be all until Jaafar and Cozzolino turned their fastest laps late on. Both jumped ahead of the BMW, which ended up 0.130s adrift of Harker, and Aston Martin. All five manufacturers were under the testing benchmark from earlier today.
Yogibo Racing’s Ferrari completed the top-six and finished one place ahead of its Silver class rival, the AAS Motorsport Porsche.
Two McLarens were next up – Uematsu leading ABSSA – while AMAC’s 911 GT3-R completed a top-10 covered by just over a second.
Triple Eight JMR’s championship leaders Prince Jefri Ibrahim and Nick Foster sat out the session due to an engine change after their Mercedes-AMG suffered an oil leak in testing.
Further back, Team GMB picked up where they left off this morning by pacing the GT4 class from GTO Racing. Shinya Hosokawa’s 1m29.576s was 0.476s faster than Hideto Yasuoka’s best.
Qualifying takes place at 10:30 JST (GMT +9) tomorrow before the first of SUGO’s two 60-minute races goes green at 16:10. Watch both live on SRO’s GT World channel.