Photo: Jules Benichou/21 Creation
Comtoyou Racing’s Gilles Magnus set the fastest lap on the opening day of Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS pre-season testing at Paul Ricard.
The Audi Sport factory driver clocked a time of 1:53.294 behind the wheel of the No. 11 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II during the four-hour morning session.
That remained the benchmark until the end of the day, as Mattia Drudi set the afternoon pace with a slower 1:53.726 effort aboard Tresor by Attempto Racing’s No. 40 Audi.
It was a strong start for the German brands as Audi, Mercedes-AMG and BMW teams filled out the top ten positions in the first session, and the top eight places in the second.
The fastest seven lap times of the day all occurred in the morning, with Sainteloc Junior Team’s Audi taking second overall ahead of ROWE Racing’s No. 998 BMW M4 GT3 and the No. 88 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of reigning Endurance Cup champion Akkodis ASP.
ASP ranked second behind Tresor by Attempto in session two, with the No. 998 ROWE car again placing third.
No major incidents were reported, although some red flags were called to replace dislodged ‘floppy’ marker cones and to deal with cars that had stopped on track.
Two more test sessions are planned for Wednesday, under the same format of four hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon.
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