+ Result: Free Practice, Barcelona
Tudor Tudurachi made a flying start to life in Willi Motorsport’s new Audi R8 by topping the times in the opening session of the weekend at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
The Romanian team has swapped its BMW M4 for the R8 LMS for this weekend and, after showing promise in pre-event testing, Tudurachi and Sergiu Nicolae showed the change has brought good as Tudurachi’s early time proved unbeatable on Friday morning.
It proved to be a session for the newcomers with the twin Speedy Motorsport Toyotas also performing well. Portuguese driver Tomas Guedes was fastest early on in the team’s Pro-Am GR Supra, with Javier Sagrera then putting the Silver sister car second for a Speedy one-two.
However, Tudurachi ended the sequence, going fastest of all on lap five and staying out front as both a brief full-course yellow and a red flag to clear a stranded Porsche from the gravel halted momentum.
Guedes and Jose Carlos Pires stayed second and top in Pro-Am, just 0.1s behind as Gregory Guilvert and Paul Petit finished first of the unchanged entries with their Team Speedcar Audi in third. Josh Rattican and McKenzey Cresswell were fourth in their Elite Motorsport McLaren while Sagrera and Hudson Schwartz kept Speedy’s second car in fifth, ahead of Joachim Bölting and Hendrik’s Still’s Pro-Am title-chasing Porsche.
A new entry also led the way in Am, with W&S Motorsport’s #31 Porsche shared by Ismaeel Ellahi and Tim Horrell finishing out front. Ellahi gradually reduced his times to run clear of Antoni de Barn and Jean-Mathieu Leandri in the #317 Chazel Technologie Course BMW. Class points leaders Max Kronberg and Daniel Blickle were right behind in third in the #30 W&S Porsche.
Pre-Qualifying is scheduled for 13:40 CEST.