Life at COTA, besides the IMSA/FIA WEC races here this weekend at COTA, the facility opted to open up part of the facility to host Cirque Du Soleil in one of the main parking lots. Isn’t quite a telling vote of confidence for attendance here at the race? Oh, by the way, the University of Texas hosts The University of California on race day for a football game (yes, American football) in which 80,000 or so fans are expected to be attending. I wonder where this event falls in importance.
Friday morning practice at 9:00 am. Qualifying take place later the same day at 4:00 pm. 75 degrees F in the morning. 90 plus degrees in the afternoon. Nick Tandy, what are you going to learn in this session to help you in qualifying this afternoon? “Absolutely nothing. It is too early in the day to help us at all.”
With that said, there was still a session that took place and needs to be reported on.
Once representative times started coming out of the cars, it was first Ricky Taylor in the WTR Corvette setting the pace, but his best was soon eclipsed by Ozz Negri in the MSR Ligier. After a series of one-upping his efforts, Negri got out and Pew got in to further acclimate himself with the car and the circuit.
That opened the door for Scott Pruett to establish the best time in the session, a 1:57.366, 45 minutes into the hour long session.
The session was interrupted by a big coming together between the 88 and 16 PC entries about 20 minutes into the session. This ended the session for the 16 BAR1 entry, as it had obvious suspension damage. The 88 Starworks also did not return.
As has been typical all event long, the top two in class came down to the 8 Starworks and the CORE entries. Renger van der Zande set the early class pace, only for Colin Braun to up the ante. Van der Zande responded just before the red and the class stayed pretty much status quo up front for the remainder of the session.
The 61 BAR1 entry had multiple spins throughout the session, but they were of the harmless sort thankfully.
Throughout most of the session in GTLM, it was a Porsche affair. For the first time all event, all three Porsches took time at the top of the class list. Initially it was Nick Tandy and Bryan Sellers swapping top times. It was evident that the Falken Porsche team found something overnight that woke up their car, as right at the end it was Wolf Henzler setting the class best, a 2:03.521, just nipping the 25 BMW of Auberlen/Werner by .02 seconds.
The class pecking order here at COTA appears to be Porsche and BMW pretty tightly together, with the single Ferrari and the two Corvettes trailing. The BMW camp is optimistic about the race tomorrow, the hotter the track, the better the BMW seems to go.
At least this time the pack was closer. Technically 7 of the 8 cars ended the session within a second of each other, but the Gavin/Milner Corvette only missed that magic barrier by .008 seconds. That bodes better for what historically has been a compelling class, but according to the Corvette camp it is simply an illusion. Given the current balance, they feel that they don’t have a chance at all.
Kuno Wittmer came out swinging for TRG, but was just short of bringing the class points leading Aston Martin into the top spot. The consistently fast Paul Miller Audi appeared at the top of the class times this session, with the 23 AJR Porsche rounding out the top 3 in class.
The 07 Mazda did not come out for this session.
Gary Horrocks
