A late flier from Jules Gounon kept Mercedes-AMG on top this morning at Monza. The French ace set a 1m46.081s at the wheel of his Verstappen Racing machine to narrowly lead Free Practice 1.
It had looked like Dennis Lind would head the order in the #24 Steller Motorsport Corvette. Lind went P1 with just five minutes left on the clock, beating long-time pace-setter Alex Malykhin's Pure Rxcing Porsche by seven hundredths of a second. The Dane seemed set to stay there, only for Gounon to shave 0.028s off the benchmark with his final lap.
This meant that there were three classes among the overall top three, with a Pro car (Verstappen) followed by a Gold Cup runner (Steller) and then a Silver Cup entrant (Pure).
The next three places were filled by Pro cars, with the #17 Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed followed by the #34 natural elements by Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin and he #51 AF Corse Ferrari.
The best of the Bronze Cup runners was also among overall top 10. Series returnee Sven Müller posted the seventh best time aboard the #97 Rutronik Racing Porsche, which won last time out at Circuit Paul Ricard.
The session was remarkably close, with an incredible 48 cars covered by less than a second. There were a number of spins and off-track moments – including a red flag when Rolf Ineichen rotated his JMW Ferrari at Ascari – but no serious incidents.
Cars will be back on-track at 14:25 for FP2, which gives the field an additional 90 minutes of running. The session will be streamed live on the GT World YouTube channel.
> RESULTS: Free Practice 1