Kiwis fastest in Phillip Island practice at GT Festival

In their Melbourne Performance Centre-run Audi R8 LMS GT3, the New Zealanders topped the session with a time of 1:25.5711, a bare 0.03s ahead of Tigani Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 duo Jayden Ojeda and Paul Lucchitti.

Alex Peroni and Mark Rosser (Audi R8) finished third for Team BRM and ahead of the first of the Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 GT3s, piloted by championship leaders Chaz Mostert and Liam Talbot.

Next was the Triple Eight Race Engineering Mercedes-AMG shared by Declan Fraser and Peter Hackett. In fifth overall was MPC’s Brad Schumacher along with Supercars Championship leader Will Brown who had a lucky let-off with a tyre blowout at Turn 1 in an earlier test session.

Then followed the second Arise entry with Elliott Shute and Jaxon Evans, Paul Stokel and Renee Gracie (MPC Audi), Stephen and Brenton Grove (Grove Racing Mercedes-AMG) with the top nine Pro-Ams covered by 1.0s.

Tenth fastest was Mike Sheargold and Garth Walden (GWR Mercedes-AMG) who was the best of AMs. They were ahead of Pro-Am Alex Gardner and Ross Poulakis (Volante Rosso Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT3) and second in AM, Marcel Zalloua and Sergio Pires (Tigani Audi).

The Tigani Mercedes of brothers James and Theo Koundouris was still undergoing repairs after its earlier shunt in paid practice.

Leading the Trophy class were Scotty Taylor and Paul Morris (Porsche 911 GT3 R).

The two qualifying sessions will begin at 12:10pm with the first of two one-hour races at 3:50pm.

The inaugural GT Festival at Phillip Island on August 23-25 has free entry for spectators and broadcast live on Kayo/Foxtel, as well as the GT World YouTube Channel.