> Result: Official Practice
Alessio Picariello maintained his fine start to the GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS weekend at Mandalika by topping Official Practice this morning.
Fastest times in three of Thursday's four test sessions hinted at the Origine Porsche's potential. And its Belgian Pro, who shares the #4 911 GT3 R with Lu Wei this weekend, served notice once again on a dry morning in Lombok by lowering the session's benchmark on consecutive laps 15 minutes before its conclusion.
His first effort pipped Dorian Boccolacci's best by half a tenth before a 1m29.338s lap increased the advantage to 0.171s.
However, yesterday's testing results suggest there's plenty more time to be found: three of the four sessions were faster than Official Practice, while Jayden Ojeda's benchmark set in the third test was 0.8s quicker than Picariello managed this morning.
A session that should have lasted an hour was ultimately extended by 10 minutes to account for a stray dog finding its way on to the track soon after it began.
Picariello was the first to dip below 1m30s but was beaten by Ojeda five minutes later. Craft-Bamboo's Daniel Frost then jumped to the top with a time that remained quick enough for third overall and fastest of the Silver entries before Boccolacci enjoyed 20 minutes out front.
A second Silver entry appeared in the top four thanks to Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom and Cheng Congfu who finished 0.3s down on Picariello, while Australians Ojeda and Jordan Love (JMR) completed the top six.
Given that Mandalika is yet to host an international car race and teams have so little data to work with it was perhaps surprising to see the entire top 20 covered by less than one second. It included the fastest Silver-Am contender - Team KRC's BMW driven by Maxime Oosten - which finished 11th and a fraction faster than class rival Lorenzo Patrese in Winhere Harmony's Ferrari.
Elegant Racing's Mercedes-AMG topped the Am class courtesy of Reinhold Ranger.
A Porsche also paced the subsequent Bronze Test, but this time it was Phantom's example driven by Anthony Liu. 2023's champion was just 0.039s faster than Ron Huang's Absolute Corse Lamborghini and another 0.4s up on Origine's 911 featuring Bob Yuan.
Friday's running concludes with Pre-Qualifying at 14:45 local time (+8 GMT).