Vanthoor Quickest in Free Practice at Kyalami

Photo: SRO

Dries Vanthoor led the way in the first official practice for Saturday’s Kyalami 9 Hour, putting Team WRT atop the time charts in the 90-minute night-time session.

The Belgian driver reeled off a best lap of 1:42.910 in his No. 32 BMW M4 GT3 to go quickest, and be the only driver to break the 1:43 barrier in Free Practice.

Vanthoor’s time was 0.091 seconds quicker than the No. 66 Tressor Attempto Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, thanks to a series of late flying laps by Patric Niederhauser.

It ultimately demoted the No. 999 GruppeM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Maro Engel, Raffaele Marciello and Mikael Grenier to fourth on the time sheets, with Drudi’s teammate Dennis Marschall also improving late in the No. 99 Audi.

Pro-Am was led by the No. 20 SPS Automotive Performance Mercedes of Luca Stolz, who also made a late-session improvement to pip the sister No. 75 SunEnergy1 by SPS entry.

The SunEnergy1 Mercedes had topped both of the test sessions early in the day in the hands of Jules Gounon.

Eleven of the 13 entries set times in the session, with two of the three national SuperSport cars electing not to complete the night-time running, as their race is set to end at the completion of the one-hour overall mark.

Pre-Qualifying is set to get underway Friday at 10:30 a.m. local time.

RESULTS: Free Practice

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John