The Italian Matteo Cairoli at the wheel of a Porsche 911 GT3R (Absolute Racing) has surprised the competition by topping the timesheets at the end of Day 1 of the FIA GT World Cup.
Cairoli, who started the day on Free Practice 1 (FP1) in third, managed to improve on the last session of the day (FP2) achieving a best time around Guia Circuit in 2m15.532s.
Placing second best was the former Macau winner, Raffaele Marciello who took his Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Team Landgraf) to a lap clocked in 2m15.565s, just a whisker away from Cairoli’s best.
Closing the top 3 was the Spaniard Daniel Juncadella in another Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Craft-Bamboo Racing) with a best of 2m15.570s.
The competition in this race was so fierce that there was only 0.038s between the first and third place and the first 11 competitors were all running on the same second (2m15s).
Also in the top 5 were two Brazilians, Daniel Serra in a Ferrari 296 GT3 (Harmony Racing) followed by another Macau former winner, Augusto Farfus in a BMW M4 GT3 (ROWE Racing).
As for the usual suspects that have had numerous duels around Guia Circuit over the years, Maro Engel (Mercedes-AMG GT3) and Edoardo Mortara (Audi R8 LMS Evo 2) continued to fight their way to the top side-by-side but, so far, this battle was for seventh place, with Mortara taking the upper hand with 2m15.787s.
Although Cairoli took the lead at the end of the first day of competition on the GT World Cup, the highlight of the day goes to Marciello who showed a fantastic pace topping the FP1 and only losing the top spot in FP2 on the last lap of the session.
After the FPs, today, things will go to the wire with one single and decisive 30-minute Qualifying session to take place at 2:05 p.m.
Whoever tops this session will have the advantage of starting at the front for the 12-lap Qualification Race that will take place tomorrow also at 2:05 p.m.
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