Team WRT BMW leads the way on speed and distance at opening day of 2024 Prologue

The Belgian driver led the morning session with a 1m53.166s at the wheel of the #32 BMW, edging out early pace-setter 2 Seas Motorsport (#60 Mercedes-AMG). GetSpeed ensured a strong start for Mercedes-AMG by placing third and fourth with its #2 and #3 cars respectively, while ROWE Racing (#998 BMW) completed the top-five.

There were a handful of stoppages during the morning, though only one lasted more than a few moments. It came shortly before midday when the #7 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin crashed at turn 7, causing a pause of around 15 minutes.

The afternoon session also ended with the #32 BMW on top, albeit a little slower than during the morning run with a best time of 1m53.324s. It was followed by the #111 CSA Racing Audi (+0.025s), the #992 Century Motorsport BMW (+0.027s) and the #97 Rutronik Racing Porsche (+0.100s) all of which were within a tenth of the afternoon benchmark.    Once again there were a handful of red flags, one of which was reasonably lengthy. On this occasion it was the #52 AF Corse Ferrari, which made heavy rear contact with the T11 barriers at around 15:20 local time and caused another 15-minute delay. Two more relatively brief stoppages followed due to the #13 Lionspeed GP Porsche and the #19 Grasser Racing Lamborghini respectively. 

A number of cars were able to complete extensive running across the two sessions. The #3 GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG banked a total of 80 laps before the lunch break, while the #8 Boutsen VDS Mercedes-AMG, the #54 Dinamic GT Porsche and the #77 HRT Mercedes-AMG all managed 79 tours of Circuit Paul Ricard.

In the afternoon session – which was one hour shorter than the morning – the #30 Team WRT BMW led the way with 63 laps on the board. There were also strong totals for the #54 Dinamic Porsche (56 laps) and the #27 Saintéloc Racing Audi (52 laps). The #30 BMW ended the day with the highest total, managing almost 800 kilometres across seven hours of running.

Cars will be back on-track tomorrow at 09:00 CET for the second and final day of the 2024 Fanatec GT Europe Prologue. 

Morning session

Afternoon session