Blancpain GT: Grasser Lambo wins Brands opener

Grasser Lamborghini drivers Jeroen Bleekemolen and Hari Proczyk claimed victory in the Blancpain Sprint Series qualifying race at Brands Hatch.

Bleekemolen ran second to pole winner Laurens Vanthoor's WRT Audi until the mandatory mid-race pit stops, before Proczyk emerged at the head of the field.

The winning Lamborghini Gallardo FLII stayed out one lap longer than its rivals, which meant Bleekemolen pitted after the safety car had been deployed and allowed Proczyk to leave the pits in the lead.

Proczyk led from Niki Mayr-Melnhof in the best of the Phoenix Audis after the race went green with 16 minutes left. HTP Audi driver Maximilian Buhk passed the Audi for second on the second lap after the restart and put Proczyk under pressure for the remainder of the race.

Proczyk said: "It was not easy, but in the parts where it is possible to overtake, I was a bit faster."

Buhk said that he was already thinking about this afternoon's full-points main race after passing the Audi R8 LMS ultra and opted not to take any risks.

Buhk's teammate in the HTP Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Maxi Gotz had got a marginally better start than Vanthoor from the outside of the front row. He was then tapped by the Audi at Paddock and lost places to Bleekemolen and Markus Winkelhock, Mayr-Melnhof's teammate in the Phoenix car.

Mayr-Melnhof lost third and fourth with six laps go to the pair of BMW Team Brazil entries of Sergio Jimenez and Matheus Stumpf and ended up fifth at the finish.

Jimenez held onto third in the BMW Z4 he shared with Caca Bueno, while Stumpf was fourth together with Valdeno Brito.

The Audi Vanthoor shared by Vanthoor and Cesar Ramos ended up sixth after it was jumped by the Phoenix and HTP cars in the pits and then lost out to the two Brazilian-run BMWs in the second half of the race.

The Silver Cup class was won by the ROAL Motorsport BMW Z4 shared by David Fumanelli and Stefano Colombo, while Pro-Am honours was taken by the Phoenix Audi pairing of Marc Basseng and Alessandro Latif.