Declan Fraser and Liam Talbot have sent an early statement out in the EVENTelec GT Festival Queensland, having topped the Pro-Am timesheets in GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS’ Practice 1.
Behind the wheel of the Volante Rosso Aston Martin AMR GT3, Talbot’s fastest lap came towards the end of the wet session with an unbeaten time of 1m15.093s, which was more than one-tenth of a second faster than the next-best crew, the Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 GT3 of Jaxon Evans and Elliott Schutte.
Perhaps the biggest story to come out of the session, though, was the Porsche 991 GT3R Trophy car of Luke Youlden and Nathan Halstead, with the pair going third fastest overall and comfortably topping the Trophy Class.
The pair proved quite strong throughout what was their first appearance of the year, however it was Youlden who stole the show with his penultimate lap, as he ended up just two-tenths of a second off the pace.
Another new face for the series, Aaron Love, made it into the outright top five for the session, as he and Stephen Wyatt in the second Arise Racing GT Ferrari 296 GT3 went third fastest in Pro-Am, while Team BRM’s Alex Peroni and Mark Rosser rounded out the overall top five for the session.
The Audi R8 LMS EVO II drivers got off to a strong start and had occupied top spot for much of the session, until Talbot went faster in the final third of the session and remained there until the red flag was brought out right at the end.
Brendon Leitch and Tim Miles ended up fifth fastest in the class, having been second for most of their time on track, but couldn’t better the time they set midway through.
Renee Gracie maintained her dominant start to the year in the Am Cup, as she went half a second faster than the returning Darren Currie and Grant Donaldson in the 111 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO.
GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS returns later today with Practice 2 at 12:10pm before Pre-Qualifying at 3:30pm AEST