Overnight rain showered continued into the early morning, which led to a cold, damp track at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta for the first Motul Petit Le Mans practice session of the weekend.
Cetilar Racing’s Antonio Fuoco crashed 30 minutes into the session when he lost control of his #47 Ferrari 296 GT3, spun into the grass and crunched the rear end of his car into the tyre barriers. Fuoco was okay after the crash, which brought out a 14-minute red flag for barrier repairs.
Later on, there was an awkward collision at the top of the hill at turn three when the #38 Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier JS P320 of Jonathan Woolridge clipped the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsports 963 of Laurens Vanthoor. This brought out a second red flag.
LMP2 cars found themselves at the top of the overall leaderboard for quite some time before the GTP cars found some representative pace.
In the end, Sebastien Bourdais and the #01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R finished with the fastest time, at 1:11.674.
The aforementioned #6 Porsche finished second with championship contender Mathieu Jaminet recording a 1:11.720 as his best lap. He was followed closely by the #7 Penske Porsche of Matt Campbell on a 1:11.907.
Jack Aitken was fourth-fastest in the GTP championship-leading #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac, followed by the fastest of the BMW M Hybrid V8s – the #24 Team RLL car of Marco Wittmann, in fifth.
Defending PLM winner Tom Blomqvist was sixth-fastest in the #60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-06.
LMP2’s three championship contenders finished 1-2-3 in class. Ben Hanley led the way in the #04 CrowdStrike by APR Oreca 07 with a 1:13.919.
Alex Quinn was second-fastest in the PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports #52, and Mikkel Jensen was third-fastest in the TDS Racing #11. John Falb set the fastest time for a Bronze LMP2 driver in the other TDS Racing car #35.
In LMP3, the young aces of Jr III Racing showed early strength. Garett Grist took the #30 Ligier to the top of the class with a 1:16.732, more than a second faster than the field.
Orey Fidani was second-fastest in the #13 AWA Duquiene D08, and Gabby Chaves was third in the returning #36 Andretti Autosport Ligier.
Jules Gounon led the way in GTD Pro, setting the fastest time in the class in his #79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. Gounon’s best time was a 1:20.279.
But Bill Auberlen was just 11 milliseconds behind in the #97 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3; Auberlen’s time was the fastest in the GTD class.
The rest of the top three in GTD Pro were the #63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 of Mirko Bortolotti with a 1:20.427, and 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Alessandro Pier Guidi, who was third-fastest in the #62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 with a 1:21.142.
In GTD ‘standard’, the standard was quite high, with Jan Heylen finishing second in class in the #16 Wright Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R, and newly-crowned GTD class champion Madison Snow was third in the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW.
Of note, a few cars including the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3, the #70 Inception Racing McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, and #74 Riley Ligier JS P320 had limited or no significant run time on track. Conditions are expected to improve throughout the afternoon.
Practice 2 begins at 2:35 PM ET following the IMSA State of the Sport address.
Images © Martin W. Spetz / Dailysportscar
