BRASELTON - Honda and Mazda led Thursday’s opening IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship practice sessions at Road Atlanta, preparing for Saturday’s season-ending Petit Le Mans.
Olivier Pla set the day’s quickest overall time during the evening hours, laying down an unofficial record lap of 1:13.541 (124.3 mph) on the 2.54-mile circuit behind the wheel of the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Curb Records/AERO Honda Ligier JS P2. He was followed closely by Mazda Motorsports’ Jonathan Bomarito, who ran a 1:14.037 (123.5 mph) in the No. 55 Mazda Prototype. Ozz Negri, who had led the afternoon session, was very pleased to once again have the full Shank endurance lineup in play.
“I can’t say enough about my Michael Shank Racing team, the crew, my engineer Dale (Wise), Gary (Karamikian) at Honda HPD, they’ve all been working flat out,” Negri said. “I’m giddy about having this group of people – including Olivier Pla – on this team. We like the same thing in the car. Anything he asks for with the set up works for me, and whatever I ask for works for him. It’s just a great thing. We are here for one objective which is to be up front and win this race.”
Competitors in the GT classes turned in their best laps during the 90-minute night session. Dirk Mueller led the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class with a lap of 1:18.340 (116.8 mph) in the No. 66 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT co-driven by Joey Hand and Sebastien Bourdais. In GT Daytona (GTD), Marco Seefried was fastest with an unofficial track record lap of 1:21.187 (112.6 mph) in the No. 44 Magnus Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 co-driven by John Potter and Andy Lally.
Championship leader Renger van der Zande paced the Prototype Challenge (PC) category, turning a lap of 1:16.235 in the No. 8 Starworks Motorsport ORECA FLM09 co-driven by Alex Popow and David Heinemeier Hansson.
