Chilean Benjamin Hites from the Grasser Racing team clocked the fastest lap of both free practice sessions in the ADAC GT Masters on Friday at Circuit Zandvoort in the Netherlands. At the wheel of a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2, Hites beat the fastest time from the morning session, set by David Schumacher (Salzburg/Haupt Racing Team), by just 0.013 seconds. “The circuit is perfectly suited to my driving style. I feel very comfortable in Zandvoort and believe I have a good chance of being right up there in qualifying and the race,” said the South American. Hites shares the sports car from Sant'Agata Bolognese with Langenargen’s Tim Zimmermann.
The ADAC GT Masters drivers got the first metres under their belts on Friday morning, with track temperatures around 21 degrees Celsius at the circuit on the Dutch North Sea coast. Schumacher set the first benchmark, stopping the clock at 1:34.434 minutes in his Mercedes-AMG GT3. The youngster, who lines up alongside last year’s champion Salman Owega (Cologne), was happy with his morning’s work: “The car was already very good. The fast sections in Zandvoort suit the Mercedes. I think we will be strong on Saturday.” Schumacher’s lap was ultimately good enough to take second place at the end of the day. With significantly higher track temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius in the afternoon, Hites just managed to beat Schumacher’s time shortly before the end of the second session. Third place went to Tom Kalender (Hamm/Sieg) and Elias Seppänen (FIN) in the Landgraf Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3, ahead of the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 of Simon Connor Primm (Großschirma) and Jonas Greif (Coswig/both Paul Motorsport). Rounding out the top five were the Kapfinger twins, Michael and Johannes, in a Porsche 911 GT3 R run by Team Joos by Twin Busch.
The drivers are back in action at 08:25 on Saturday morning, when they contest the first qualifying of the weekend. The session will be streamed live and free of charge at adac.de/motorsport and on the YouTube channel @adacmotorsports. Saturday’s race follows at 15:15 and will be shown live on German free-to-air TV by television partner Sport1.
