Grasser Racing’s Mirko Bortolotti claimed pole position for the opening Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe race at the Nurburgring.
Bortolotti set a best time of 1m54.926s to put his #63 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 just six hundredths of a second clear of the championship-leading Black Falcon Mercedes of Luca Stolz.
The similar Lamborghini of Marco Mapelli (FFF Racing) initially headed the times after an early red-flag stoppage, but a late flurry of activity pushed the #563 to sixth by the flag.
The session was stopped just five minutes in when Rory Penttinen lost control of his Kessel Racing Ferrari at the Schumacher Esses.
Penttinen then hit the outside barriers hard, which brought a temporary end to proceedings.
Once the session resumed, Nico Bastian set the quickest time, but was beaten soon after first by Mapelli and then the Audi R8 LMS of Suzuka 10 Hours winner Kelvin van der Linde.
Simon Gachet then took his Sainteloc Audi R8 to the top of the times with six minutes remaining as the field attempted to get their laps in.
But Bortolotti set the quickest first and second sector times of all to end up with the fastest time as van der Line fell to fourth.
Mattia Drudi claimed a comfortable Silver Class pole in the Attempto Racing Audi R8 with fifth overall, while Bastian’s Akka ASP Mercedes was second in class and eighth overall.
The second Akka ASP car of Fabian Schiller starts ninth ahead of the #1 WRT Audi of Ezequiel Perez Companc. The third Akka Mercedes will start race one from 13th in the hands of Vincent Abril.
In the Pro-Am category, Rinat Salikhov will start from pole in his Rinaldi Racing Ferrari, with the AF Corse Ferrari of Louis Machiels lining up second and 24th overall.
Florian Scholze claimed an unchallenged Am class pole after Penttinen’s off. He completes the field.