Well, maybe "Kick-Off" overestimates the meaning of the first real numbers around the second season of GT2 World Series. However the pre-qualifying was already a knock-out round. Thirty five teams completed timed laps over the course of fourty-eight hours, consequently five teams would only make it onto the reserve list and would need to hope for a team to withdraw before the race.

After 4838 laps or a total of nearly 16.000km (9.943mi) at Blackwood Grand Prix reversed the results list saw My3id Gaming up at the top of the list. Joe Holmes did a 1:10.32, three hundreds faster then his own team mate Tomasz Nogiec. The last pre-qualified car in 30th, Hellenic Racing and their fastest driver A. Perrs, was able to get a 1:11.41. Between 1st and 30th there are just 1.09s difference - an incredible density for a GT2 field.
This can also be seen by the positions of other top runners from the previous year. 2011 runner-up and bronze medalist Western Wolves (back then LowLandLions) pre-qualified in 11th position. The positioning outside of the top 10 can be explained by the little number of laps (24) driven by Mathias Wentjärvi. For the actual qualifying and the race, Western Wolves' line-up feature the new "black stripe" in their roster: Simon Cattell was awarded an iRacing.com Pro license earlier this week. Third driver is this year's Kyoto 250 champion Robin Friskopps. This year the SuperGT GT500 champion only fields one car because in 2012 a second car must fulfill amateur requirements.
CoRe Racing is again running a two car program. Completing 2011 as 4th and 11th, the cars pre-qualified 2nd and 12th. The three Finns on the PRO FZR GT2 missed just five hundreds of a second to match My3id's time. spdoRacing wins the fuel efficiency award: 10 laps were enough to make the Top-30. Like CoRe Racing Genuine Racing returns with two cars, which finished the session in 10th and 17th. Unlike most of the teams, which signed-up 3 drivers for the season opener, Krasimir Ivanov and Joonas Koskinen share the PRO car and Francois Maris and Virgil Mocanu share the AM.

Only 70% of last year's top 10 returned. Sonicrealms is on the sign-up list and might join during the season, but although setting a laptime, they failed to confirm and therefore are not scored in pre-qualifying. Guglhupf Racing Team and Tiger Express Motorsports did not return either, which means two top FXR teams are missing, leaving the top 14 in pre-qualifying to three XRR and eleven FZR. Only Lanzarote Racing Team uses the FXR this season.

Now we know Hellenic Racing is 30th and the last team which advances to the qualifyings. They beat the 31st team by 0.03s, that are 1.31m. Angry Angus Racing was the hardest working team. They travelled the outstanding number of 772 laps. Challenge Racing Team singed up after the session already started and are a further hundred down. Lanzarote Racing Team (AM), RLR Team and rForce™ (AM) also failed to make the cut.

Full pre-qualifying results can be found here: http://tracker.newdimensionracing.com/archive/gt2ws/2012/round1/preq/