First day of the season is in the books – Qualifying winners are determined
Sunny summerlike weather awaited Baltic Touring Car Championship more than 100 participants for the first official race day in the season. While first part of the day was test sessions, the second part was more serious with official free practices and Qualifying sessions to determine – who will start from the first rows of the starting grid.
In the BMW 325 CUP things were close as ever, and the fastest among the 30 cars was Paulius Urbonavicius with a lap time of 1:28.412 and he will start from the pole position tomorrow alongside Ricards Subeckis. Second row of the grid will be occupied by “Rode Racing” pilot Krisjanis Oskerko and “Dream 2 Drive” leader Julius Kirsis. First race for the BMW 325 CUP will start 12:25 while Race 2 is scheduled for 15:55.
Beautiful lineup is in the GT class rides, where 18 participants hit the track, with cars like 6 Porsche GT3 CUP 992 cars, Mercedes-Benz AMG GT3 EVO II and Lamborghini Huracan ST EVO. Great lap times were set, but the hero of the day was french man Leo Messenger who set up the best time ever set by Porsche GT3 CUP car in Porsche Ring – 1:12.973! Followed by Eduardas Klepikas and Egidijus Grazys. Fastest among the GT PRO cars was Leonardas Dirzys but in GT AM class fastest lap was set by Porsche Baltic driver Nerijus Raudonis. BTC4 – Henrikas Statkus.
Baltic Touring cars class set a high pace in Qualifying and a personal best lap time for Arturas Kliobavicius was perfectly good to be the fastest guy on the grid and a pole position, Simo Lind from BTC2 class will line up alongside him in the start. Tomas Jatkevicius and Andrius Keblys will from the second row of the grid.
V1600 and ABC Race class Qualifyings will start early tomorrow to determine the grids for races but official practice was topped by Viesturs Ozols in V1600, while Mareks Matvejevs was fastest in the ABC Race class.
12 class forms the grid for Formula Historic class. Qualifying was won by Latvian rocket Raitis Murnieks, beating second place man Taavi Kuul by more than 2 seconds.
Qualifying practices for Nankang 2h Endurance race will take place early Saturday morning, while the racing day will be opened by the GT race at 11:10.
