Engelhart, who won the Sunday race at Hockenheim in 2017 with co-driver Rolf Ineichen, was fastest by a wide margin with a time of 1:53.265 minutes set early on. As the track subsequently got wetter and wetter, the top time went unchallenged for the rest of the session. "At the beginning the track was not so wet, so we even tried it with slicks, although that didn’t work," said Engelhart. "We immediately switched to rain tyres, and the car then went very well in the wet. I hope that will again be the case on Sunday morning, when more rain has been forecast."

Second place went to GRT Grasser team-mates Mirko Bortolotti and Andrea Caldarelli, 0.842 seconds behind. Jake Dennis and Christopher Mies were third with a deficit of 1.332 seconds. In fourth place were their Montaplast by Land Motorsport team-mates, Sheldon and Kelvin van der Linde. The brothers finished the Friday leading up to the ADAC GT Masters grand finale fastest overall on the basis of a lap time of 1:39.471 minutes set in the dry first practice session, “Our car works really well here,” said Sheldon van der Linde. "Obviously, we don’t know who was on new tyres this morning. I’m a little surprised how good we were. Tomorrow will be a very important day. We have to qualify as far forward as we can and survive the first lap without getting caught up in any accidents. We’re going to give it everything we’ve got in the title fight."

Completing the Top Five were the Mercedes-AMG pairing of Luca Stolz and Sebastian Asch (Team Zakspeed BKK Mobil Oil Racing).