AKKA ASP driver Raffaele Marciello sent Mercedes-AMG to the top of the timesheets in this afternoon’s Blancpain GT Series free practice session at Zolder.
Temperatures had climbed noticably since the lunch break, allowing competitors to extract more speed from their cars. Belgian Audi Club Team WRT ace Robin Frijns quickly made the most of this and spent much of FP2 on top, with the Dutch driver lapping in 1m29.388s to comfortably beat the fastest time from the morning.
But Marciello delivered an even quicker time during the latter stages of the session, edging out Frijns by just 0.018s in another extremely close-run contest.
Audi cars occupied positions 2 through 5, with Frijns closely followed by Christopher Haase in the #25 Sainteloc Racing machine. Next up were a pair of Belgian Audi Club Team WRT entries, with the #1 of Christopher Mies beating the #2 of Will Stevens. The German brand's R8 LMS is well suited to Zolder and is defending a perfect record from the past two Blancpain GT Series events at the circuit.
But the competitive order remains finely balanced, with 13 cars covered by less than a second this afternoon. At the bottom of that spread, the #14 Emil Frey Lexus Racing machine showed considerable improvement from the morning.
With practice complete, Saturday will see two qualifying sessions and the season-opening race, with a second race scheduled for Sunday. All of the weekend's on-track activity will be streamed live on the Blancpain GT Series website.
Free Practice 2 Results