“2 Seas Motorsport” team, owned by His Highness Shaikh Isa bin Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, set the fastest time across two days of running during the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Prologue at Circuit Paul Ricard.
The No. 60 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, which is entered into the Gold Cup and will be driven by HH Shaikh Isa bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Martin Kodric and Lewis Williamson for the full Endurance Cup season, set the benchmark time of 1:52.800 on Wednesday morning.
No driver names were made public by SRO Motorsports Group for the test, which took place across four sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Bahraini-flagged squad stopped BMW from completing a sweep of all four sessions, as the Munich manufacturer went quickest across Tuesday and also topped the fourth and final session on Wednesday afternoon with Team WRT.
However, it was reigning CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa winners ROWE Racing that carried the flag for BMW, with its No. 998 M4 GT3 posting a 1:52.830 to trail the 2 Seas entry by 0.030 seconds.
The No. 3 GetSpeed Performance Mercedes-AMG ended up running in third, ahead of the No. 32 Team WRT BMW and the No. 9 Boutsen VDS Mercedes-AMG that will be driven in the Sprint Cup by Jules Gounon and Maximilian Goetz.
The top four cars were the only four to dip below the 1:53 marker, while all of the fastest times were posted on the second day of running.
Behind the No. 48 Winward Racing car, the No. 111 CSA Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II was the first entry not from Mercedes-AMG or BMW to feature in the top ten.
The Gold Cup-entered car went third quickest in the fourth and final session with a time of 1:53.088, which was good enough for seventh in the combined standings.
AF Corse picked up eighth with its No. 71 Ferrari 296 GT3, which will be driven by Thomas Neubauer, David Vidales and Vincent Abril for the full Endurance Cup campaign.
The top ten was rounded out by the No. 77 Haupt Racing Team Mercedes-AMG and Pure Racing’s No. 911 Porsche 911 GT3 R.
Two new cars took part in their first sanctioned SRO sessions, with the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo and Ford Mustang GT3 both in action at Paul Ricard.
While four examples of the British marque’s new car turned laps in the hands of Comtoyou Racing and Walkenhorst Motorsport, the Blue Oval was represented by a single, Proton Competition-entered car at the test.
The No. 64 Ford Mustang GT3, which the Christian Ried-led squad will campaign in both Sprint and Endurance Cups, completed a total of 44 laps and set a best time of 1:53.649 on Wednesday morning.
The Fanatec GT Europe season gets underway with the Paul Ricard 500km on April 5.
Below is the full schedule of the Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by the AWS Endurance Cup:
05-06 March: Prologue | Paul Ricard, France
05-07 April: Round 1 | Paul Ricard, France
21-22 May: Prologue | Crowdstrike 24 Hours of Spa, Belgium
26-30 June: Round 2 | Crowdstrike 24 Hours of Spa, Belgium
26–28 July: Round 3 | Nurburgring, Germany
20-22 September: Round 4 | Monza, Italy
21-23 November: Round 5 | 6 Hours of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
