It was Audi in session one and Mercedes in session two with Liam Talbot and Jayden Ojeda respectively the fastest in each of the third round Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS qualifying sessions.
The first 15 minutes was to determine the starting order for Race 1 at Phillip Island and was looking like a one-two-three for Audi R8s with Talbot and Brad Schumacher swapping fastest times until Geoff Emery split them.
Then Yasser Shahin (Porsche 911 GT3 R) jumped in the mix to go second behind Talbot and ahead of Emery and Schumacher. Next and best of the Mercedes-AMG GT3s was Ross Poulakis ahead of the similarly mounted Justin McMillan.
Also in Audis, and in the next three places, were Matt Stoupas, Marcel Zallous, Andrew Fawcet and Ash Samadi. Just out of the 10 came Darren Currie in his Invitational class MARC II ahead of Michael Kokkinos and Trophy Class leader Renee Gracie (Audi).
The second Porsche in the field, in the hands of Stephen and Brenton Grove was an early casualty with a broken gearbox.
At first in the second outing, Max Hofer in Emery’s Audi was the pace-setter before Glen Wood replicated his form from practice to go ahead in the McMillan Mercedes. Ojeda was the next one to go to the top in the car he shares with Poulakis.
Ojeda was able to maintain the top spot for the remainder where Garnet Patterson (in Shahin’s Porsche) jumped up the second ahead of Dylan O’Keeffe (in with the Fawcet Audi) who took third.
Hofer was fourth and looked to be one for a quick lap at the end but ran wide at Turn 12 and continued down the grass as the chequered flag came out. Earlier, Dan Jilesen (in Tauton’s MARC GT) had a similar excursion and managed to take out three Supercheap Auto signs.
Wood finished the session sixth ahead of Fraser Ross (with Talbot), Garth Walden (with Michael Sheargold in a Mercedes), David Wall (with Adrian Deitz in their Lamborghini Huracan), Sam Brabham (sharing a Mercedes with Christos Batzios) while Schumacher on his own in both sessions, was 10th.
Race 1 is set to kick off at 12:55 on Saturday and will be live on Stan Sport. Race 2 will be on Sunday at 12:10.
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