The Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup action kicked off at the iconic Nürburgring GP-Strecke with the opening Free Practice session. Teams hit the track in Eifel to refine setups, manage high-density multi-class traffic, and measure their initial pace.
Leading the timing sheets at the end of the initial hour-and-a-half run was ROWE Racing. Factory driver Raffaele Marciello spearheaded the charge in the #98 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, asserting the German marque’s strong baseline performance at their home venue.
Strategic Priorities Across the 50-Plus Field
Free Practice 1 serves as a critical window for engineering crews to establish baseline setups before the high-stakes qualifying rounds and three-hour Endurance Cup race. With over 50 GT3 cars spanning Pro, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Cup categories sharing the 5.137-kilometer layout, clear track space was a rare commodity throughout the session.
Drivers spent much of the morning working through traffic management strategies and long-run tire evaluations. Finding a rhythm through complex sequences like the Michael-Schumacher-S and the tight Arena section proved essential, as rubber laid down during earlier testing sessions rapidly transformed track grip levels.
Front-Runners Set the Early Standard
Raffaele Marciello laid down the benchmark lap late in the running to put ROWE Racing on top. Sharing the #98 BMW M4 GT3 EVO alongside Augusto Farfus and Jake Dennis, Marciello demonstrated sharp one-lap speed while maintaining consistent sector times across his stint.
Chasing closely behind were several top-tier entries from competing manufacturers. Teams like Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed, Comtoyou Racing with their Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 EVOs, and Iron Lynx Ferraris kept the gap at the top within fractions of a second. The tightly stacked leaderboard highlights how small the margins remain among the front-running Pro Cup contenders heading into the rest of the weekend.
Class Battles and Upper-Hand Surprises
While the Pro Cup contenders captured the overall headline times, the fight across the lower-tier categories produced intense battles. Gold and Bronze Cup entries frequently intermingled with top-ten overall lap times, continuing a trend of strong secondary-class performances seen throughout the Endurance season.
Paradine Competition and Winward Racing showed early speed in the Bronze Cup ranks, while Boutsen VDS demonstrated strong form in the Gold class setup. Mechanics and race engineers now face a short turnaround to analyze telemetry data, tweak damper settings, and finalize gear ratios ahead of the afternoon track running.