France Quickest in Opening Practice at Vallelunga

Jim Pla put team France on top of the leaderboard in the first GT Cup practice session for this weekend’s FIA Motorsport Games at Vallelunga.

Pla set the pace with a time of 1:32.693 behind the wheel of the French-entered Mercedes-AMG GT3, which is being run by the AKKA-ASP squad.

A late improvement from Patric Niederhauser put team Switzerland’s Lamborghini Huracan GT3 second, ahead of the team Germany Porsche 911 GT3 driven by Alfred Renauer.

The gap between Pla and Niederhauser at the end of the 1 hour, 20-minute session was 0.201 seconds, while Goerig lapped just under half a second off the overall pace.

Fourth-quickest was Denis Bulatov, who posted a time of 1:33.169 in the Russian Ferrari 488 GT3, while former FIA World Endurance Championship racer Weiron Tan completed the top five for team Malaysia.

The Malaysian Porsche that Tan is co-driving with Adrian Henry D’Silva brought out the red flags midway through the session when it stopped at pit entry.

Sixth-quickest was Poland, ahead of the entries from Japan, Australia, Chinese Taipei and Denmark.

The only member of the 22-car field not to take part in the weekend’s opening session was the Portuguese Audi R8 LM GT3 Evo, which spent the duration in its pit box.

A second practice run is scheduled for 1:05 p.m. CET (8:05 a.m. ET).

RESULTS: Practice 1