Max Verstappen made an eventful start to his GT World Challenge Europe debut weekend at Portimao, causing an incident during the opening minutes of Free Practice 1, which remains under investigation.
Verstappen took the wheel of the #3 Verstappen Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 early in FP1 at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve. Just three minutes into the session, the Red Bull driver made contact with Ezequiel Perez Companc in the #25 Sainteloc Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II at Turn 3 (Lagos).
With 61 cars sharing the 4.653km circuit, heavy traffic was expected throughout the session. However, Verstappen spun the Audi around after clipping its rear corner, gesturing in frustration as he passed, seemingly expecting Perez Companc to have ceded room.
Race control placed the incident under investigation, leaving Verstappen at risk of a potential grid penalty for Saturday's three-hour race. In GTWC Europe, on-track incidents during practice sessions can carry grid drops, loss of practice time or deleted lap times.
Once running resumed normally, Verstappen focused on set-up work, initially placing around 20th on the leaderboard before improving to 10th after 20 minutes and settling in 14th at the half-hour mark. His personal best lap of 1m43.026s eventually placed the #3 entry in 20th overall at the checkered flag.
The lower classification holds little significance for race pace, as the crew focused primarily on race tire management, probably using a used set of rubber following Thursday's two-hour test session.
Verstappen completed an extended 48-minute stint before handing over to Ben Barnicoat, who made his first public appearance in a Mercedes-AMG GT3 since February 2025, usually racing Lexus and McLaren GT3 machinery.
Barnicoat then returned the car to Verstappen for the final eight minutes, which coincided with a practice Full Course Yellow procedure. Team regular Chris Lulham did not feature during the opening session.
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Max Verstappen on GTWC Europe debut: “We’re here to win”Christopher Haase set the fastest time of FP1 aboard the #84 Eastalent Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II he shares with Reicher and Markus Winkelhock, posting a 1m42.643s lap – 0.331s quicker than the best time recorded during Thursday testing.
"We had quite a bit of bad luck during the season, so hopefully we can maintain this form. The car feels good," Haase said.
The #32 WRT BMW of Kelvin van der Linde, Jordan Pepper and Charles Weerts finished just 0.004s behind Haase, leading a tight field where the top five cars were separated by less than a tenth. That included the #46 WRT BMW shared by Neil Verhagen, Max Hesse and MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi.
Overall, 50 entries sat within one second of the pacesetting Audi, which is a tightly-packed field even for GTWC Europe standards.
Free Practice 2 is scheduled to start at 12:45pm local time.