Road America awoke this morning to a calm summer breeze for race morning Warm-Up.
The session, which runs for only a short 20 minutes, saw laps turned by every car in the series except the LMP2 entries. The #07 SpeedSource Mazda Racing LMP2 car of Joel Miller and Tom Long and the #60 Michael Shank Racing Ligier JS P2 machine of John Pew and Oswaldo Negri Jr. They must have thought to heed the age old advice given by Hugh Chamberlin that, “nothing good ever happens in warm-up.”
The session was filled with countless practice driver changes, tire changes and practice pit stops. By sessions end, the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Riley DP of Joey Hand and Scott Pruett were at the top of the time sheets with a time of 1:57.282; surely great news for the pole sitters of this afternoon’s race. Second position in this morning’s warm-up session was the #31 Action Express Racing Car of Eric Curran and Dane Cameron, posting a time of 1:57.939, just .657 tenths of a second back from the lead.
The #31 was the fastest Corvette DP in the morning’s session. Third position, with a time of 1:58.412, is the #90 VistFlorida.com Racing Corvette DP, with drivers Richard Westbrook and Michael Valiante. It’s all surprise in 4th position however, with the #0 CIaro/TracFone DeltaWing Racing of Memo Rojas and Katherine Legge posting a solid time of 1:58.759. This was the highest the DeltaWing had been on the time sheets all weekend thus far. Fittingly, in the fifth place position is the #5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP of Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi, with a time of 1:59.114.
Top finishers in the other classes were the GTLM entry of #911 Porsche of Nick Tandy and Patrick Pilet with a time of 2:04.036. Race weekend popular Risi Competizione, who have been the talk of the paddock this weekend with their new Ferrari 488 GT car coming online with testing recently, did well in this mornings warm-up session, posting a 4th fastest time of 2:05.232.
After the session, Risi driver Pierre Kaffer spoke about his chances going into this afternoon’s race. “I think we improved quite a lot since yesterday’s morning dry session. The track is coming to our car. Which is pretty usual for our weekends. There was heavy rain, which doesn’t suit our car very much. But as the weekend has dried out, the track is now sticky and it really suits our car.”
LMPC’s fastest warm-up time, a 1:59.775, was set by the #11 RSR Racing Oreca FLM-09 of Bruno Junquiera and Chris Cumming.
The GTD entered #33 Riley Motorsports Dodge Viper SRT of Ben Keating and Jeroen Bleekemolen was the fastest in their class, with a time of 2:09.363.
