Rovera Puts Ferrari Fastest in First 24H Spa Practice

Ferrari set the pace in first practice for the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa with Alessio Rovera leading the way as the Italian manufacturer topped three of the five classes.

Rovera posted a 2:17.234 early into the 90-minute opening track session in the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo to head Conrad Laursen in the No. 71 Selected Car Racing Ferrari, which led the Gold Cup ranks, by just 0.073 seconds.

Third fastest was the No. 99 Tresor Attempto Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Dylan Pereira, who clocked a 2:17.371, while fourth was the No. 5 Optimum Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Guilherme Oliveira on a 2:17.484 to set the Silver Cup pace.

The best of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos, the No. 48 Winward Racing machine of Luca Stolz, was fifth fastest with a 2:17.590.

Another Ferrari occupied sixth spot, the No. 74 Kessel machine of Dennis Marschall that set the pace in the Bronze Cup with a 2:17.673.

Completing the cars within half a second of Rovera’s benchmark were the No. 59 Garage 59 McLaren of Marvin Kirchhoefer, the No. 17 GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG of Maximilian Goetz and the No. 22 Schumacher CLRT Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo of Ayhancan Guven.

Rounding out the top-ten was the No. 7 Comtoyou Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, while the 17th-placed Grupo Prom Racing Mercedes-AMG set the benchmark in the Pro-Am Cup division as the first 23 of the 69 cars were separated by a second.

The session was relatively incident-free with just one red flag occurring almost 20 minutes in when Kerong Li stopped on track in the No. 86 High Class Racing Porsche at the Paul Frere Curve.

The crews next head out on track for a further hour of practice at 4:10 p.m. CEST (10:10 a.m. EST) prior to qualifying in the evening.