G-Drive tops second Asian Le Mans practice at The Bend

G-Drive Racing by Algarve has topped the final practice session ahead of this weekend’s Asian Le Mans Series event at The Bend.

The session ended with yellow flags out for the No.16 Astro Veloce Motorsport BMW which had stopped in the gravel at Turn 25, while the No.1 Eruasia Motorsport entry of Shane van Gisbergen, Daniel Gaunt, and Nick Cassidy were referred to the stewards for passing under yellow flags.

They weren’t the only ones to catch the eye of officials with the No.33 Inter Europol Endurance Ligier also placed under investigation for improving its sector time under yellows.

Times during the session were the fastest of the weekend thus far, with the No.26 G-Drive Aurus’ best of 2:35.418s a full second faster than had been managed in previous sessions.

That effort was set just under half an hour into the 90-minute session and stood the test of time.

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Roman Rusinov banked the time, which pipped Ben Barnicoat’s previous marker in the No.45 Thunderhead Carlin Racing entry by just over a tenth of a second, which remained the second best time of the session.

Third fastest was the all-Kiwi Eurasia effort which had topped Friday’s practice, their 2:36.421 on par with the time van Gisbergen had managed on Friday afternoon.

The van Gisbergen/Gaunt/Cassidy entry was s second off the pace in an LMP2 field spread by 7.7 seconds.

RLR MSPORT were again the pace-setters in the LMP2 AM class courtesy of a 2:43.416s, a three second improvement from Free Practice 1.

Heading the LMP3 class was the No.1 AC E1 Villorba Corse Ligier, recording a 2:50.933s time that was 0.2s quicker than the next best in class, the No.2 Nielsen Racing Norma M30.

As it had been in Friday Practice, the JLOC Lamborghini Huracan GT3 was the fastest of the GT runners, setting a 2:58.787s lap that was 0.501s up on the Car Guy Ferrari 488 GT3.

Qualifying for Sunday’s race, a three part affair with segments for each of the classes (LMP2 and LMP2 Am combined) begins at 13:30 ACDT.