In a well-matched field, of which 28 cars were within one second of each other, the 21-year-old topped the timesheets for the first occasion in his Super Sports Car League career. He was marginally ahead of Corvette driver Marvin Kirchhöfer who had posted the fastest lap of the first session with a time of just 1:29.594 minutes. “We benefited from the fact that we did not have a good weekend at Most and therefore had fresh tyres in reserve,” said Marschall, who shares the cockpit of the M6 GT3 with Sweden’s Victor Bouveng. “The BMW works really well on this track, especially in the fast corners. Of course, it was only free practice, and you can’t really know what the other teams were up to.”

Second place went to the afternoon’s fastest Porsche 911 GT3 R. Timo Bernhard and Kévin Estre of KÜS Team75 Bernhard finished the day 0.157 seconds off the pace of the lead BMW. Third place went to Alessio Picariello and Christopher Mies of Montaplast by Land-Motorsport in the best of the Audi R8 LMS contingent. They were followed by the second Schnitzer BMW driven by Mikkel Jensen and Timo Scheider. Completing the Top Five was another Audi R8 LMS, this time entered by Aust Motorsport and driven by the pairing of Nicolaj Rogivue and Frédéric Vervisch.