The first showdown of the new ADAC GT Masters season saw last year’s champion Elias Seppänen (FIN/Landgraf Motorsport) set the fastest time of Friday’s free practice sessions at Motorsport Arena Oschersleben. The youngster clocked the fastest time of 1:22.849 minutes in his Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the morning session. Second fastest was the duo of Maxime Oosten (NL) and Leon Köhler (Erlenbach am Main) in a BMW M4 GT3 run by FK Performance Motorsport. The best lap of the second practice session came courtesy of Benjamin Hites (CHL) and Tim Zimmermann (Langenargen/both Grasser-Racing-Team) in a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2, and was the third fastest of the day.
With temperatures in the low double figures, the drivers took to the 3.667-kilometre track in the Magdeburg Börde region for the first time on the Friday of the season-opener. Two one-hour practice sessions were scheduled, and it was Seppänen who came out on top. “Starting the new season with a fastest time obviously feels good. However, points are not awarded until the race. We are working hard to be up at the front,” said the Scandinavian.
Rounding out the top five were the two Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Haupt Racing Team: fourth place went to the pairing of Finn Wiebelhaus (Obertshausen) and Jannes Fittje (Langenhain), ahead of Salman Owega (Cologne) and David Schumacher (Salzburg).
Saturday kicks off at 09:15 with the first qualifying session, which can be seen on the free livestream at adac.de/motorsport sand on the YouTube channel @adacmotorsports. From 15:15, the ADAC GT Masters will go in search of its first race winner of the new season. TV partner SPORT1 is showing all the race action live on German free-to-air TV.
