{"id":836193,"date":"2026-07-31T18:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T18:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/836193\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T18:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T18:37:10","slug":"fp1-verstappen-racing-leads-mercedes-amg-one-two-three-at-magny-cours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/836193\/","title":{"rendered":"FP1: Verstappen Racing leads Mercedes-AMG one-two-three at Magny-Cours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jules Gounon led a Mercedes-AMG one-two-three in Friday afternoon&#8217;s Free Practice 1 at Magny-Cours. The Verstappen Racing man posted a 1m37.190s to beat fellow AMG driver Marvin Dienst (#87 Winward Racing) by 0.231s in a session run in drying conditions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Affalterbach marque is still searching for its first overall win of 2026, though it has scored five runner-up finishes from the opening seven races. Two of those came courtesy of the Verstappen squad, and it was the Dutch-flagged car that set the benchmark in FP1.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dienst continued his strong recent form in Winward&#8217;s Bronze Cup entry by placing second overall and leading his class. The German ace also beat the sister #48 car of Lucas Auer, who completed AMG&#8217;s top-three lockout.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Charles Weerts was next in the championship-leading #32 Team WRT BMW, followed by Gilles Magnus in the best of the Porsches. The #10 Boutsen VDS machine was at the front throughout the session, with Robin Knutsson showing well in the opening phase, and led the Gold Cup standings in P5 overall.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/10-PZ8_6843.JPG\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sixth went to defending Bronze Cup champion Dennis Marschall in the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari, followed by another Bronze frontrunner in Fabian Schiller (#12 GetSpeed Team Dubai Mercedes-AMG).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ignacio Montenegro paced the Silver Cup class by setting the eighth best time overall in his #30 Team WRT BMW. The overall top 10 was completed by Ben Green&#8217;s #69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari and Silver Cup entrant Mateo Villagomez (#34 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">All 44 cars competed in FP1. None of them encountered any obvious problems, and there were no stoppages during the session. Tonight&#8217;s FP2 could be more challenging, however, with the possibility of storms hitting the circuit. The green flag is scheduled to be shown at 20:40 CEST.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&gt; RESULT: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gt-world-challenge-europe.com\/images\/News%202026\/6%20Magny-Cours\/GTWCEU_GT3_FP1_ResultList_1-0.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Free Practice 1<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jules Gounon led a Mercedes-AMG one-two-three in Friday afternoon&#8217;s Free Practice 1 at Magny-Cours. The Verstappen Racing man&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,408173,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-836193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fp1-verstappen-racing-leads-mercedes-amg-one-two-three-at-magny-cours","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}