FIA GT Championship

FIA GT Oschersleben - Free Practice Result

© Planetlemans - Brecht Decancq

Less than a week after the 24 Hours of Le Mans the FIA GT Championship is at Oschersleben for the third round of the 2009 championship. On Friday the 24 cars completed the first free practice session of the weekend and it was the Vitaphone Racing Team Maserati MC12 of Bartels and Bartolini that was quickest.

Despite sunshine on Thursday the session on Friday was driven on a grey Motorsport Arena Oschersleben. The Nissan GT-R and Aston Martin Vantage returned to the series after having skipped the Adria round. Thomas Biagi raced in the LAA Corvette alongside Xavier Maassen, Marc Hennerici took Biagi’s place in the Matech GT Racing Ford. At PeCom Racing Luis Perez Companc and Matias Russo returned. Other changes included Johnny Mowlem at Full Speed Racing, Jörg Bergmeister at Trackspeed Porsche and Sean Edwards at Prospeed Competition.

In the 80 minutes long session the #1 Maserati set a fastest time of 1:26.273 in the opening stages, a time that was never beaten by any of the others. The two KplusK Motorsport Saleen S7Rs of Sharp/Wendlinger and Dominguez/Lacko were second and third in GT1. When the checkered flag came out there were seven cars within eight tenths of a second.

In the GT2 class Porsche recovered a bit from the Le Mans deception by taking first and second in class. Bergmeister’s #59 Trackspeed Porsche 997 GT3 RSR topped the time sheets (1:29.982), while the Brixia Racing Porsche of Ragginger and Lucchini in second place. The #56 CRS Racing Ferrari F430 GT2 managed to take third in the final minutes of the session, preventing a Porsche cleansweep.

Best of the ‘2010′ GT1 cars #44 Matech GT Racing Ford GT in 8th place.