The South African driver, who leads the overall standings together with HCB-Rutronik Racing team-mate Patric Niederhauser, set the best time of the day in FP2. He posted the fastest time of 1:29.341 minutes in the final minutes of the session. He was 0.2 seconds faster than Porsche driver Matteo Cairoli had been when he went quickest earlier this morning. "Of course, it's nice to see at this early stage on Friday that things are going reasonably well," said van der Linde. "But I don't think that the other teams have shown all their cards yet. I can't wait to see how we do tomorrow. I think that the new Audi R8 LMS suits the track better. The car is excellent, especially in the fast turns, but we won't know where we actually stand until tomorrow."

The RWT Corvette driven by Sven Barth and David Jahn was second fastest on Friday after they missed best time by a mere 0.013 seconds. "We were able to make quite good progress and improve during the day," said Jahn. "We discovered something new to do with set-up, which gained us time, especially in the corners on the second sector. We're well pleased, because it's made the car even more driveable and we hope this improvement continues tomorrow so that we can finish among the Top Five and secure a good haul of points."

With a 1:29.417, the MRS-BMW of Jens Klingmann and Nicolai Sylvest took P3 from the Callaway Corvette driven by Markus Pommer and Marvin Kirchhöfer (1:29.489 minutes). Local hero Mick Wishofer and Zakspeed colleague Kelvin Snoeks completed the Top Five in the best-placed Mercedes-AMG GT3 to round off this Friday at the Red Bull Ring.