BMW Sport Trophy Team Schubert’s #20 topped the practice session for the 43rd ADAC Nurburgring 24 Hours, repeating the sort of form that helped them win the Qualifying Race last month.
The fastest lap of the session (8:29.079) was set by Dominik Baumann in the BMW Z4 GT3 he shares with Claudia Hurtgen, Jens Klingmann and Martin Tomczyk – the same line-up that won the six hour race in April. BMWs dominated the top of the timesheets, Baumann’s time replacing Jorg Muller’s lap in the BMW Sports Team Trophy Marc VDS #26 that had pushed the sister #25, and driver Markus Palttala, from the top of the timing screens.
The pair of Marc VDS entries ended the session third and sixth, Muller’s 8:29.544 good enough to keep the car of he, Augusto Farfus, Nicky Catsburg and Dirk Adorf as the bottom part of a BMW sandwich around the #29 Audi Sport Team WRT R8 LMS.
The #2 Black Falcon entry was the best of the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 with the Falken Motorsports Porsche completing the top five, only 3.4 seconds slower around the 25km circuit than the Baumann BMW.
The top ten was made up entirely of GT3 cars, with the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG 003c the best from outside the SP9 class in 11th place, six seconds off the optimum pace from the session.
The best of the Bentleys was 12th fastest a further eight tenths of a second faster. The best Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 – the #7 of Darren Turner, Stefan Mucke, Pedro Lamy and Richie Stanaway was 14th fastest.
The Wochenspiegel Team Manthey Porsche, in 24th was the best of the SP-Pro class that also features the Lexus LFA Code X.
Team Mathol Racing led the SP10 – GT4 class with their Aston Martin Vantage and another Aston was fastest in the SP8 class.
The Rotek Racing team featuring former BTCC drivers Robb Holland and Tom Chilton amongst its four drivers was the fastest in the SP4T class in their Audi TTRS.
Kissling Motorsport’s Opel Manta – one of the real stalwarts of the Nurburgring 24 Hours – was 142nd fastest of the 143 cars to complete a lap.
