The AXR Cadillac of Jack Aitken led the field in the opening IMSA SportsCar Championship practice session at Road Atlanta ahead of Saturday’s 28th Petit Le Mans.
Piloting the #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R, which won the previous round at Indianapolis, Aitken set a 1:11.260 shortly after the 10-minute mark of the 90-minute session.
The Briton was never threatened at the top of the leaderboard, with Tom Blomqvist coming closest in the #60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb-Agajanian ARX-06 after setting a 1:11.671 five minutes later.
Ross Gunn placed the #23 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie third with a 1:11.959. Gunn’s time, set 30 minutes in, signalled the end of the fast lap times in Practice 1, with no significant changes to the timesheets in any of the classes beyond this point.
Fourth overall went to the #93 Meyer Shank Acura of Nick Yelloly, ahead of Louis Delétraz in the #40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R and the #63 Automobili Lamborghini Squadra Corse SC63 of Romain Grosjean.
Mathieu Jaminet was best of the Porsche 963s, over a second behind Aitken, in the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry. The #40 Cadillac and pair of BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8s completed the top 10.
In LMP2, Dane Cameron led the way in the championship-leading #99 AO Racing Oreca 07, sporting its new Halloween-themed skeleton livery.
Cameron set a 1:12.859, displacing Inter Europol Competition’s #43 ORECA of Tom Dillmann from the top of the timesheets 25 minutes in.
Dillmann held on to second with his 1:12.958, ahead of Sebastien Bourdais in the #8 Tower Motorsports entry. Mikkel Jensen was fourth in the #11 TDS Racing Oreca, with the #52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca of Logan Sargeant rounding out the top five.
In the GT ranks, the best GTD PRO runners edged the fastest GTD entry in opening practice for only the fourth time this season.
Dan Harper set a 1:19.615 inside the opening 15 minutes to go fastest aboard the #48 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evo, with Aaron Telitz later slotting into second position, 0.022 seconds down, in the #14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3.
The sister #1 Paul Miller BMW of Neil Verhagen was third, ahead of the points-leading #3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Z06 GT3.R and the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2.
The #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo led GTD in the hands of Philip Ellis, with a 1:19.638 placing the British-flagged driver third amongst all of the GT runners.
Second fastest, 0.158 seconds slower, was Kenton Koch in the #023 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3, ahead of the #21 AF Corse Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi.
The #96 Turner Motorsport BMW was fourth, with fifth going the way of Frederik Schandorff in the Bob Akin Award-contending #70 Inception Racing Ferrari.
The session was interrupted by a pair of short Red Flags, totalling under 10 minutes of lost track time, for incidents at Turn 5.
First, 31 minutes in, John Potter went off into the gravel aboard the #44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo. After 16 minutes in the pits, the Vantage was able to return to the session.
And then, inside the final 20 minutes, an incident occurred between the #73 Pratt Miller Motorsports Oreca LMP2 of James Roe and Robert Megennis’ #021 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari.
The prototype driver was assigned the blame, with the #73 Oreca joining the #44 Aston Martin in losing its best qualifying lap time for triggering a Red Flag.
Running for the IMSA Sportscar Championship competitors continues with Practice 2 at 15:15 EST, before Night Practice completes today’s track time at 19:30 EST.
Image courtesy of Cadillac
