Raffaele Marciello (27/CH) affirmed his title ambitions in the first qualifying session on Saturday morning. The championship leader from Mann-Filter Team Landgraf not only set the fastest lap time of 1:17.878 minutes in the #48 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, but also set a new ADAC GT Masters qualifying record at the Sachsenring.
“It is a great advantage to start the race from the front in the ADAC GT Masters. We have achieved that and picked up three bonus points for the fastest qualifying time. We had a few issues in free practice on Friday and changed the tyre pressure, among other things. That allowed us to get the tyres to the right temperature today, which gave us plenty of grip. That was key,” said the Mercedes-AMG works driver after winning the Pirelli Pole Position Award. 0.112 seconds slower in second place was fellow Mercedes driver Fabian Schiller (25/Troisdorf), who shares the cockpit of the #4 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo with Jules Gounon (27/F) for Drago Racing Team ZVO. Kim-Luis Schramm (24/Meuspath) from the Rutronik Racing team was third in the #27 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II. Starting alongside him from fourth place on the grid will be the #91 Porsche 911 GT3 R #91 of Christian Engelhart (35/Starnberg), who currently lies second in the championship, and Ayhancan Güven (24/TR). The best of the Lamborghini drivers was Mick Wishofer (22/A) from Emil Frey Racing, who secured fifth place on the grid for the #14 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo.
When qualifying got underway at 08:50 on Saturday morning, with track temperatures at the Sachsenring around ten degrees, it began in rather unusual fashion. After the cars had completed one or two slow laps, they all returned to the pit lane and waited. A good ten minutes before the end of the 20-minute session, the entire field returned to the 3.645-kilometre track and set off in pursuit of fast times. Raffaele Marciello set his fastest time on lap six, after which qualifying was suspended due to a crash involving his team-mate Elias Seppänen (18/FIN). After the restart, there was no change at the top of the timings during the remaining 2:58 minutes. Despite the cool temperatures, the first four cars were all faster than the previous qualifying record, which was set in 2020.
Race eleven of the ADAC GT Masters season starts at 13:00. The action can be followed live on adac.de/motorsport and motorsport.tv.
