> Absolute's guest Porsche beats Climax Mercedes-AMG
> Official Practice result
Tom Sargent made a fast start to his guest appearance at Fuji by topping the Official Practice times in Absolute's Porsche.
The car he shares with GT World Challenge America powered by AWS co-driver Kyle Washington set a 1m39.223s to lap 0.469s faster than Elias Seppanen (Climax Mercedes-AMG) in the first of Friday's three sessions.
Silver-Am entries therefore locked out the top two positions.
Sargent and Washington's maiden appearance at Fuji began with a bang - literally - on Thursday when a blown engine curtailed the first of two test sessions. Setting fourth fastest time in the afternoon hinted at their potential before the Australian beat Thursday's benchmark by 0.3s at the start of Friday morning.
But the significant gap between Absolute's Porsche and everyone else suggests there's plenty more to come from the likes of Seppanen and Dorian Boccolacci, who took Phantom's Porsche to third overall and fastest Pro-Am time.
Guesting factory drivers Laurin Heinrich (Origine Porsche) and Max Hesse (KRC BMW) finished fourth and sixth, sandwiching 5ZIGEN's Silver class Nissan driven by the returning Atsushi Miyake. All three were within a second of Sargent's best.
Championship leader Alessandro Ghiretti was seventh fastest in the Eva Racing-liveried Absolute-run Porsche.
Fastest Am time went to Garage 75's Ferrari, which returns to the class this weekend following Sean Gelael's outing on home turf at Mandalika.
However, that time was then beaten in the Bronze Test by Ghiretti's co-driver Huang Ruohan whose 1m40.538s effort proved 0.153s quicker than Anthony Liu (Phantom). Wang Zhongwei made it a Porsche 1-2-3.
Pre-Qualifying follows at 15:45 today ahead of Qualifying proper and Race 1 tomorrow.