A late flying lap from Nick Foster helped HubAuto Corsa finish fastest in the Suzuka 10 Hours’ second Paid Practice session this morning, while Audi Sport Team WRT’s Sheldon van der Linde was best placed of the Intercontinental GT Challenge entries in third.
With yesterday’s torrential rain replaced with clear blue skies it was little surprise to see lap times tumble during the two-hour session. Foster, who claimed pole position in the same Ferrari when Blancpain GT Series Asia visited Suzuka in June, waited until the very end before setting a benchmark time of 2m03.525s.
That was 0.108s quicker than the first of KCMG’s Nissans driven by Edoardo Liberati and another half-tenth clear of Van der Linde’s Audi.
Andrea Caldarelli also improved on his final flying lap to move JLOC’s Lamborghini up to fourth, but only by 0.001s from yesterday’s pace-setting GruppeM Racing Mercedes-AMG driven by Maro Engel. Elsewhere, Mathieu Jaminet’s early flyer aboard the Craft-Bamboo Porsche ensured just 0.170s covered the top-six.
SunEnergy1 Racing’s Mercedes-AMG was second of the Pro/Am entries in eighth after Luca Stolz lapped within 0.6s of class and overall pace-setter Foster, while less than one second covered positions first to 14th.
The weekend’s first official practice session starts at 13:50 this afternoon before night practice begins at 18:30.