Rafaelle Marciello continued his farewell weekend to Mercedes AMG with a last-lap heartbreaker for Audi at Macau on Friday afternoon.
Eduardo Mortara had set a record-breaking pace in his attempt for pole position of tomorrow’s Qualifying race of the 2023 FIA GT World Cup with the multi-Macau-master throwing down a 2:14.758 to shave almost a second off Matteo Cairoli’s record-breaking lap yesterday. The top 11 cars all set lap times faster than the current lap record for GT3 cars.
But Marciello had the final say with an outstanding final lap of the 30-minute session, a 1:14.542, demolishing the efforts of the rest.
Laurens Vanthoor led the session before a red flag interruption after Kévin Estre’s #27 Porsche ended its session in the wall at T3 after 10 minutes, this after no fewer than three other cars, the #11 BMW and the #120 and #28 Porsches had run on all into escape road at T3.
There were other brushes with the street furniture too, notably from Leo Hongli Ye in his Porsche, but the session stayed green thereafter.
The session would finish with all five marques in the top 7, Mortra staying second fastest for Audi ahead of Maro Engel in his #77 AMG, Laurens Vanthor in the fastest time for Porsche in his #99 Toro Racing 911 GT3.R, Sheldon van der Linde in the WRT BMW fifth and Daniel Serra finishing 7th in the Harmony Racing Ferrari 296 GT3.
Daniel Juncadella (6th), August Farfus, Earl Bamber and Christopher Haase would complete the top ten in the session.
The 12-lap Qualification race gets underway at 14:05 local time tomorrow.
