Raffaele Marciello set the pace in Saturday afternoon’s Pre-Qualifying session ahead of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup opener at Monza.

The reigning overall Blancpain GT champion set a flying lap of 1:47.645 in the No. 88 AKKA ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3 which he shares with Vincent Abril and Michael Meadows.

Pre-Qualifying could potentially prove more important than usual with rain forecast during tomorrow morning’s qualifying session.

This could result in qualifying being cancelled if the weather is heavy enough, which would mean the grid is decided by Pre-Qualifying times.

Orange 1 FFF Racing Team’s No. 563 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo was second quickest, 0.281 seconds behind the AKKA ASP car, while Black Falcon’s lead Mercedes placed third.

Jenson Team Rocket RJN led the Silver Cup from seventh overall, one position ahead of Pro-Am leader AKKA ASP.

Barwell Motorsport topped the Am Cup with its No. 77 Lamborghini.

The session was again stopped by red flags for heavy incidents, with the first one involving Denis Bulatov and Florian Scholze in the Rinaldi Racing and HB Racing Ferrari 488 GT3s.

The second came after Matt Campbell went into the tire wall at Lesmo 2, damaging his ROWE Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Qualifying is scheduled for 9:40 a.m. local time on Sunday, while the race will start at 3 p.m.

RESULTS: Pre-Qualifying