The second half hour began with Farnbacher passing Tommy Milner (No. 4), the Corvette struggling with a baulky gearbox. This left the GT order as Bomarito – Magnussen – Malucelli – Farnbacher, with the two BMWs falling behind, John Edwards ahead of Bill Auberlen. But that was only a relative factor as Edwards refused to let the big iron cars get too far away.
In PC Cumming remained in a very strong PC class lead while others in the class had problems. John Pew spun the No. 5 car and Tomy Drissi was called into the sin bin for avoidable contact. Heinemeir Hansson had an excruciatingly long stop during which the engine refused to refire.
Auberlen, handing over to Joey Hand, was the first of the GT cars to stop. In GTC it was a Cisneros – Keating train with a steady 5 seconds between them. The order in the balance of GTC was Leaping Lizard (No. 45 Nelson Canache), AJR (No. 22, Cooper MacNeill), JDX (No. 11 Mike Hedlund), Patrick Dempsey (No. 27) and lower Lizard of Seth Neiman (No. 44).
As for the others in GT, Bryan Sellers was doing well with the three-year old Falken Porsche that replaced the team car damaged in Baltimore. Stragglers in the class were the AJR run No. 23 Ferrari of Bill Sweedler and the Miller team Porsche, No. 48 of Marco Holzer.
The second GT car to stop was the healthy Corvette of Jan Magnussen—Garcia taking over. Van Overbeek was the next in, P2 class in his case, handing over to Ed Brown. Chris McMurry brought the second overall Lola in, Tony Burgess stepping behind the wheel. This gave Luhr an even larger lead. The leading Muscle Milk entry did stop on the next lap. Their stop was quite quick as Luhr stayed aboard and the team skipped taking on new tires. Thus the exchange of stops was completed with no change in the lead.
The other LM P1 class car, the closed top Delta Wing, was cruising around behind most of the PC class runners, with Katherine Legge taking over from starter Andy Meyrick. The other drama as the first hour ended involved the first retirement—Tommy Milner pulled the No. 4 Corvette off the circuit with the car stuck in second gear. The GT standings were a bit upside down thanks to several early stops. Malucelli moved into the class lead, well clear of the Falken Porsche and then came the first of the GT cars that had stopped, the No. 3 Corvette.
The LM P2 order also changed with the Level Five entries staying out and cycling briefly to the front until Scott Tucker handed No. 551 over to Ryan Briscoe and Marino Franchitti took over from Guy Cosmo in No. 552. The Level Five cars stayed near the top thanks to another stop by the No. 01 Extreme Speed entry, althought the latter team’s other car, No. 02 did take the class lead. Further back in the PC class, young star Tristan Nunez took over the No. 18 Performance Tech Oreca from Charlie Shears. They moved forward in the class as erstwhile leader Cumming handed over to Kyle Marcelli.
GT leader Malucelli stopped late in the sequence, handing over after a good pit call to Olivier Beretta. However, on re-entering the circuit he tapped Marcelli’s car, giving the PC prototype a bit of damage to the rear. Sean Edwards, taking over from Cisneros, inherited the GTC class lead with the TRG entry about five seconds behind, Damien Faulkner taking over from Keating.
Janos Wimpffen
