With apologies, we have been rather remiss in not bringing up to date coverage from the Petit Le Mans meeting at Road Atlanta thus far. Suffice to say there has been a very good reason for this which is nothing to do with racing!
Enough of that, here’s a catch up of the major points of interest from Thursday and Friday.
Thursday Free Practice 1
The entry list took a dent as the #38 Performance Tech PC Oreca was withdrawn from the meeting after a heavy shunt for Conor Daly very early in the session at T1. Conor was mercifully OK, the Oreca less so, the car unable to be repaired in time to take any further part in proceedings.
Indeed the session was peppered with red flag interuptions, mercifully though with no further major damage for the teams to deal with.
Up front it was the Michael Shank Racing Ligier Honda that dominated the timing sheet, Ozz Negri powering round in the #60 car in a best time of 1:15.163, almost half a second up on the next best time, this an effort from Scott Pruett in the #01 Ganassi Riley Ford EcoBoost DP.
On the day that the DeltaWing outfit unveiled its, very different looking GT Concept, Katherine Legge got the current car into third on the timesheets just a couple of tenths off the Riley Ford.
Colin Braun once again topped the PC times in the #54 Core Autosport Oreca, this despite Anthony Lazarro bringing out one of red flags in the car earlier in the session, Braun’s time less than a second off the top Prototype time, and ahead of a pair of Corvette DPs, 1:15.976
The #25 BMW BMW Z4 GTE topped GTLM in the hands of Dirk Werner with a 1:19.546, ahead of four others, also in the 1:19s, all three Porsches and the #4 Corvette.
Spencer Pumpelly topped GTD in the #73 Park Place Porsche with a 1:22.407 with the #007 TRG AMR Aston next up and both Scuderia Corsa Ferraris also in the 1:22s.
Thursday Free Practice 2
Not for the first time the weather gods played their hand at Road Atlanta, light drizzle moving into a heavy downfall after the first 15 minutes of the second hour-long practice session.
Before then though Joey Hand played his – hang on, too many hands! – mounted his charge and planted the #01 Ganassi Riley Ford on top of the times with a 1:16.937
When the rain came though there was a deja vu moment as the session was red flagged after another heavy shunt for a PC Oreca, this time it was the #85 JDC/ Miller machine in the hands of Mikhail Goikhberg, the car aquaplaning off at T5. The driver was fine, the car less so, but repairable.
Thursday Free Practice 3, Night Practice
Rain again was the dominant factor in the third free practice session, 90 minutes in darkness around Road Atlanta which, for the third session in a row saw a heavy accident for one of the participants.
This time it was one of the overall leading contenders as John Pew lost control of the #60 MSR Ligier on standing water through T12 and hit the wall hard.
Once again the driver was OK, evaluated and released.
The car though was in a poor state, and, with the benefit of the delay to this report we can now report that with the assistance of Elan Motorsports, the chassis was brought back to the team on Friday. Once again the very excellent motorsport family pulled together to good effect. The #60 car would not quite make qualifying but the entry is back from the brink.
Again too the weather saw further red flags, wet disrupted end to a day with too much weather, and too much damage.
