Following a morning session that was cut short by a few minutes thanks to a hefty crash suffered by Laurens Vanthoor, the final practice before Friday’s qualifying ran for its full 30 minutes without any stoppages to ensure the drivers got plenty of laps under their belt to dial in their cars and set-ups.

Although Vanthoor was unable to take part while repairs continued on his car, his Tempo by Absolute Racing team-mate Picariello showed the potential in their Porsche as he eventually came through on top – as he and Marciello rotated at the top of the timesheets throughout.

With Marciello having been on top halfway through running with a 2m16.820s, Picariello pieced together two superb efforts late on to ensure that he would end practice on top. With six minutes remaining, he lowered the benchmark to 2m16.196s before going better the next time around to lower the best effort to 2m15.966s.

Marciello tried his best to respond late on, with BMW showing good speed through the first sector, but his time of 2m16.193s was 0.173 seconds off the best.

It was another BMW driver, South African Sheldon Van der Linde, who ended up third quickest, with a fast lap in the closing minutes of 2m16.575s.

Turkish driver Ayhancan Güven finished the session with the fourth quickest time in his Porsche, ahead of another Porsche driver Laurin Heinrich and Ferrari’s Ye Yifei.