Marciello Leads Pre-Qualifying to Continue Akkodis ASP Form

Akkodis ASP’s strong start to the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup meeting at Zandvoort continued as Raffaele Marciello led Pre-Qualifying practice in the No. 89 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

Marciello turned in a time of 1:33.459 to head up the 80-minute afternoon session, after his co-driver Timur Boguslavskiy topped the timesheets during Free Practice.

Marciello improved on Boguslavskiy’s 1:34.101 marker to end Friday as the fastest outright driver, while four Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo IIs also entered the 1m 33s range in Pre-Qualifying.

The Swiss driver beat Dries Vanthoor in the No. 32 Team WRT Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II by a narrow margin of 0.035 seconds.

Vanthoor ended up one place ahead of Dennis Marschall driving the No. 66 Attempto Racing Audi, while Silver Cup pace-setter Thomas Neubauer took fourth for WRT’s No. 30 crew.

The overall top five was rounded out by Christopher Mies on a 1:33.980 effort in the No. 33 WRT Audi, with the pair of Dinamic Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 Rs in close company.

Andrea Bertolini set the Pro-Am pace before his AF Corse Ferrari co-driver Louis Machiels caused a late red flag after spinning and stopping at the Kumhobocht right-hander.

Two other red flags interrupted the session. The first was caused by Valentino Rossi spinning his WRT Audi into the gravel at Turn 2 after around 20 minutes, while the second was for JP Motorsport McLaren driver Dennis Lind going off at Hugenholtzbocht.

Rossi’s rotation occurred in a new Audi chassis after WRT rolled out a new car to replace the damaged example that the Italian crashed during Free Practice.

Qualifying for the first of this weekend’s two 60-minute Sprint Cup races is due to take place at 9:45 a.m. CEST (3:45 a.m. ET) on Saturday.

RESULTS: Pre-Qualifying