Morris Schuring tops second practice at Zandvoort by nearly two tenths
Morris Schuring put a Porsche on top of the times in second practice at Zandvoort on Friday, and he did it by nearly two tenths of a second on his home circuit. It caps a day in which three of the four Dutch drivers in GT World Challenge Europe finished a session inside the top five.
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A 1m34.450s, and nobody else got close
Schuring’s best lap in the number 2 Boutsen VDS Porsche 911 GT3 R was a 1m34.450s. Ricardo Feller was second in the number 80 Lionspeed GP Porsche on a 1m34.643s, which is 0.193s away, and at a circuit where the whole field is usually covered by a second that is a considerable margin.
Ben Green took third in the Emil Frey Racing Ferrari, 0.120s behind Feller and 0.082s clear of Arthur Leclerc in the AF Corse car. Klaus Bachler was fifth in the Razoon Porsche on his return, and Tom Fleming was sixth overall in the number 58 Garage 59 McLaren, which made him the quickest of the Gold Cup runners.
Eddie Cheever was seventh in the number 93 Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing Porsche and the fastest in Bronze. The number 10 Boutsen VDS Porsche, the number 51 AF Corse Ferrari and the number 3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing of Dani Juncadella completed the top ten.
The session ran almost clean. A full course yellow with around 25 minutes to go was the only interruption, called to recover the number 163 VSR Lamborghini that had stopped on track.
Aka set the benchmark in the morning
The opening 80 minutes belonged to Alex Aka, who lapped the number 99 Tresor Attempto Racing Audi in 1m34.458s. That is a Gold Cup car setting the pace outright, and it is eight thousandths of a second slower than what won the afternoon session, which tells you how little the circuit came to the teams over the course of the day.
Thierry Vermeulen was second, 0.133s back in the Emil Frey Ferrari, with teammate Matteo Cairoli a thousandth behind him. Emil Frey has a history here and it showed. Marvin Kirchhöfer was fourth for Garage 59, and then came four Porsches inside a tenth of each other.
Both Schuring brothers ended a session at the front
Simon Birch set an identical time to Flynt Schuring in FP1, the younger Schuring making his series debut in the number 89 Lionspeed GP Porsche. He was fifth overall and fastest in Silver Cup, ahead of Riccardo Pera.
It is the second strong weekend in a row for the elder Schuring. Seven days ago he shared the winning number 44 Falken Motorsports Porsche with Tim Heinemann in a rain-hit NLS9 at the Nurburgring, leading from pole in the opening stint. There is a full profile of Morris Schuring here.
So by the end of Friday the elder brother had topped a session outright and the younger had led his class on debut, at the Dutch round. Add Vermeulen’s second place in FP1 and the Dutch contingent, which we listed in full in the Zandvoort entry list, had the kind of Friday the home crowd came for.
The championship leaders had a quiet Friday
Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts lead the Sprint Cup by 2.5 points, and their number 32 Team WRT BMW was eleventh in FP2. The number 48 Winward Mercedes of Maro Engel and Lucas Auer, fifth in the standings, was seventeenth.
Feller’s second place is the exception among the title contenders, and it is the one that matters most, because Van der Linde carries a five place grid penalty into Saturday. We set out what that does to the arithmetic in our look at the title fight.
Guilherme Oliveira was eighteenth overall in the number 5 Optimum Motorsport McLaren, which made him the quickest Silver runner in the afternoon.
Our note of caution: Friday pace is not Saturday pace here
Two practice sessions at Zandvoort tell you less than two practice sessions almost anywhere else, and the reason is the thing everyone in the paddock keeps repeating: you cannot pass here. A Friday time is set on a clear track with whatever fuel and tyres the engineer felt like. Saturday morning decides the race.
What the timing screen does say is that the Porsche is working. Four of the top eight in FP1 were 911s and the top two in FP2 were as well, on a circuit with long committed corners that reward a car which rotates. If that carries into qualifying, Feller and Schuring start from the front and the race is close to over.
And there is the other reading, the one that is harder to dismiss. Aka’s morning lap in a Gold Cup Audi was within eight thousandths of the fastest lap anyone managed all day. Either the Audi really is that good here, or the Pro runners were nowhere near what they will do on Saturday morning. Both are possible, and only one of them is comfortable for the title contenders.
Qualifying at 09:50 on Saturday
Qualifying 1 starts at 09:50 on Saturday morning and Race 1 follows at 13:15, both streamed free on the GT World YouTube channel. A second qualifying session and Race 2 follow on Sunday, each race running to one hour with a pit stop and a driver change. The format is explained in our GT World Challenge Europe guide.
Tessa van Duin is at the circuit for us all weekend, and the qualifying and race reports will follow here.
