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EMA Porsche, Triple Eight Mercedes set Sydney Practice Pace
The Yasser Shahin/Garnet Patterson Porsche and the Prince Jefri Ibrahim/Richie Stanaway Mercedes have set the pace in this morning’s two practice sessions for the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS at Sydney Motorsport Park.
In this morning’s first session Patterson set the pace for EMA Motorsport/The Bend Motorsport Park, with an early 1m 26.1843s enough to see the sole Porsche in the field remain on top of the time sheets for the balance of the session.
Patterson was over half a second ahead of two Mercedes at the end of Practice One, with Garth Walden second in the RAM Motorsport/GWR Australia entry to be co-driven by Michael Sheargold, and Stanaway third in the Triple Eight Race Engineering/JMR entry he’ll share with Prince Jefri Ibrahim.
The session was briefly red flagged inside the final ten minutes when the MC Labour Audi of Michael Kokkinos found trouble in the final sector, however the Am Class entrant was able to return to the pits under his own power, allowing for a brief green flag period to end the session.
The slightly overcast conditions from the morning session had cleared for Practice Two in the late morning, with Sydney Motorsport Park basking in glorious winter weather.
The two Triple Eight Race Engineering/JMR Mercedes led the session after the early running, with Stanaway setting a 1m 28.4318s to head the sister car of Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim/Jamie Whincup by just under four tenths of a second.
The duo were soon broken up by the EMA Motorsport/The Bend Motorsport Park Porsche that set the pace in the morning’s first session, sitting only 0.014s behind the pace set by Stanaway at the start of the session.
Any potential qualifying simulations were aborted when the session was brought to a premature end with just under five minutes to go after Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim found trouble at turn three, requiring a tow from the runoff area.
Austrian ace Max Hofer was the top Audi in the second session, placing the Jamec Racing entry co-driven by Geoff Emery fourth, four tenths off the pace.
The quickest entry in GT3 Am was the RAM Motorsport/GWR Australia Mercedes of Michael Sheargold/Garth Walden in seventh outright.
Paul Lucchitti was the quickest GT3 Trophy competitor, placing his Audi R8 LMS Ultra in fifteenth outright.
And the Invitational and GT4 classes both feature one entry apiece, with the Invitational KTM GT XBOW of David Crampton/Trent Harrison seventeenth outright, and the GT4 Mercedes of Mark Griffith in eighteenth outright.
The Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS returns to the track for back-to-back qualifying sessions this afternoon at 2:05pm and 2:15pm.