IMSAs annual trip to Road America got off to a scorching start with Friday practice. A Thursday night deluge washed away any rubber caked onto the newly repaved four-mile “National Park of Speed”. Running from the Mazda MX-5 and Lamborghini Super Trofeo support series laid down a bit but when the main series cars got on track it was clear it would take some getting used to.
At the end of the first IMSA practice session, Sebastian Bourdais and the #01 Cadillac V-Series squad went quickest with a 1:49.538. 0.054 seconds behind them lay the #31 Action Express Cadillac with Pipo Derani on the sticks and in third was the #24 BMW with Augusto Farfus in the driver’s seat.
Incident packed practice
Three incidents marred the first practice session. Giedo van der Garde made friends with a wall at the carousel in his #35 TDS Racing Oreca LMP2 machine. Steven Thomas had an almost identical incident in the sister #11 TDS Racing Oreca in the second session.
Shortly after the Van der Garde incident, Mathieu Jaminet spilled debris on track from the nose of his #6 Porsche and brought out the red flag. The final incident was a heavy one, with Misha Goikhberg sustaining heavy damage to his #78 Forte Racing Lamborghini after a crash at the kink. The #78 was damaged beyond repair in the incident and the team are working to rebuild a new car before qualifying tomorrow.
Cadillac tops practice
The second practice session was led by the #31 Action Express Cadillac and Pipo Derani who cut a few seconds off the first practice session and finished with a 1:47.986. The #01 came second with a and the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing machine ran third.
WTR driver Ricky Taylor spoke with LWOS in the paddock after practice 1 about how the GTP machine has evolved this season.
Everywhere it has evolved. I think from the cockpit to the systems to the car setup, It just continues to evolve.” Taylor said. “I think we’d love to be doing more races honestly, just more time with the car.”
The kink claimed some more victims during P2. This time around Alan Brynjolfsson in the #77 Wright Motorsport Porsche took a spin but saved it from disaster and got the car rolling again. Mike Skeen in the #32 Team Korthoff Mercedes wasn’t so lucky and suffered damage from his accident.
Day 1 of the IMSA SportsCar Weekend. ☑️ See you tomorrow.#IMSA | @roadamerica pic.twitter.com/jx9vwSWdGN
— #IMSA (@IMSA) August 4, 2023
A wild day of practice foretells a wild qualifying tomorrow as the IMSA paddock takes the track once more at 1:15 pm Central Time to set the grid for the hotly anticipated race on Sunday.
