Nurburgring 24h: Marciello tops first qualifying for Mercedes

After a free practice session on Thursday afternoon cut short by barrier repairs and severe rainfall, most of the field got their first representative running of race week in first qualifying, and for most of the session the pace was set by Mercedes drivers. 

With just over half an hour left, Marciello posted what turned out to be the fastest time of 8m24.801s in the #48 Team HTP Mercedes-AMG GT3 he shares with Christian Hohenadel, Lance David Arnold and Maximilian Gotz.

Other competitors didn’t have the chance to post faster times in the remainder of the session because of an incident between two slower cars and a lengthy slow zone.

Rene Rast was the fastest of the Audis in second place after a poor start to the session. The former DTM champion was in the end just 0.211s slower than Marciello at the wheel of the #14 Car Collection Motorsport R8 LMS.

Nico Bastian did the fastest time in the third-placed #6 Black Falcon Mercedes, 0.544s off the pace, with the best of the Manthey Racing Porsches, the #911, in fourth. ROWE Racing's #98 M6 GT3 headed the BMW assault in fifth.

The #2 Black Falcon Mercedes of Maro Engel was sixth-fastest, marginally faster than Nicky Catsburg in the #99 ROWE Racing BMW.

Jan Seyffarth was the fastest of the drivers in the #16 GetSpeed Mercedes and finished in eighth place, while the Ring Police Porsche 911 and the #101 Walkenhorst BMW completed the top 10.

Thursday night qualifying was the first of two sessions to determine the field for Top-Qualifying, with a new system in place to determine the 36-car field for the Friday evening pole shootout.

Seventeen cars have already been granted an entry, while the rest of the GT3 cars will be judged with the use of theoretical lap times, taken from the best individual sector times during qualifying.

Session results (top 10):

Pos.	#	Drivers	Car	Time	Gap
1	48	Christian Hohenadel   Lance David Arnold  Raffaele Marciello   Maximilian Gotz	Mercedes-AMG GT3	8'24.801
2	14	Markus Winkelhock   Christopher Haase   Marcel Fassler   Rene Rast	Audi R8 LMS	8'25.012	0.211
3	6	Patrick Assenheimer   Nico Bastian   Yelmer Buurman   Gabriele Piana	Mercedes-AMG GT3	8'25.345	0.544
4	911	Earl Bamber   Michael Christensen   Kevin Estre   Laurens Vanthoor	Porsche 911 GT3 R (991 II)	8'28.054	3.253
5	98	Philipp Eng   Connor de Phillippi   Tom Blomqvist   Mikkel Jensen	BMW M6 GT3	8'28.414	3.613
6	2	Adam Christodoulou   Maro Engel   Manuel Metzger   Dirk Muller	Mercedes-AMG GT3	8'29.017	4.216
7	99	Nicky Catsburg   Marco Wittmann   Jesse Krohn   John Edwards	BMW M6 GT3	8'29.545	4.744
8	16	Renger van der Zande   Tristan Vautier   Jan Seyffarth   Kenneth Heyer	Mercedes-AMG GT3	8'29.835	5.034
9	8	Jan-Erik Slooten   Lucas Luhr   Adrien de Leener  Steve Jans	Porsche 911 GT3 R (991 II)	8'30.859	6.058
10	101	Christian Krognes   David Pittard   Lucas Ordonez   Nick Yelloly	BMW M6 GT3	8'31.255	6.454