Fantastic weather with sunshine and temperatures nudging 25 degrees marked the start of the first ADAC GT Masters fixture of the season to be held outside of Germany's borders on Friday morning at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. This first free practice session ended somewhat surprisingly after a lengthy scrap for best time between Lamborghini and Nissan. Florian Stoll and Marc Basseng were ultimately quickest in the Audi R8 LMS ultra (kfzteile24 MS RACING) with a best time of 1:31.577 minutes, leaving the new Lamborghini Gallardo R-EX (Reiter Engineering) of Tomas Enge and ADAC GT Masters newcomer David Russell from Australia trailing with a deficit of 0.238 seconds. This very first practice session was extremely exciting with the promise of more thrilling action to come in Austria - just one second covered the fastest 18 supercars.

Another Lamborghini, the new Huracán fielded by local team Grasser Racing based in Knittelfeld was third with Adrian Zaugg and Mirko Bortolotti at the wheel. The two Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3s (MRS GT-Racing) came home behind the three V10 mid-engine sports cars in the lead. Both Marc Gassner/Florian Strauss and Dominic Jöst/Florian Scholze took P1 for a time and finished practice in fourth and fifth place respectively.

Andreas Weishaupt/Christer Jöns were the fastest drivers in an Audi, placing sixth ahead of the best BMW Z4 driven by Claudia Hürtgen/Uwe Alzen (BMW Sports Trophy Team Schubert) and the Bentley Continental GT3 of Clemens Schmid/Fabian Hamprecht (Bentley Team HTP). The second Audi R8 LMS ultra of kfzteile24 MS RACING team with Daniel and Edward Sandström Dobitsch completed the Top Ten.

Local driver and championship leader Klaus Bachler took twelfth position along with his new team-mate Philipp Eng in the Porsche 911 GT3 R (GW IT Racing Team Schütz Motorsport).

Defending champion Kelvin van der Linde and Stefan Wackerbauer were forced to watch from the side-lines in FP1, while the engine in their Audi R8 LMS ultra (C Abt Racing) was replaced.