On-track running ahead of the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship season began at the Daytona International Speedway this morning, as the pair of BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8s led the field out of the pits for the opening session of this weekend’s IMSA Sanctioned Test.
And three and a half hours later, it was Nick Yelloly who headed an Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian 1-2 at the top of the timesheets.
The Briton set a 1:35.725 aboard the #93 Acura ARX-06 to go fastest, inside the opening 20 minutes when the majority of fast times were set.
This effort displaced the #60 Acura of teammate Tom Blomqvist from the top spot by 0.766 seconds, although Blomqvist subsequently reduced his deficit to 0.516 seconds with a 1:36.241.
Third fastest was Nico Pino in the #85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Porsche 963, which also led the session in terms of lap count, with the #10 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R of Filipe Albuquerque fourth.
The pair of Porsche Penske Motorsport entries came next, the #7 of Felipe Nasr ahead of Matt Campbell in the #6, whilst Louis Delétraz was seventh in the #40 WTR Cadillac.
The best of the BMWs was eighth in the hands of Dries Vanthoor, ahead of the sister car of Marco Wittmann, and the #31 Cadillac Whelen car of Jack Aitken. Behind the Acuras, the GTP field was incredibly close, with under half a second separating third through tenth.
The 11th GTP runner, the #23 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie, was the first car lined up to enter pit lane once it opened this morning. But the Valkyrie failed to complete a lap after Ross Gunn stopped on his out lap with an electrical issue. The car did not return to the track, with The Heart of Racing aiming to rejoin this afternoon.
In LMP2, Tom Dillmann was fastest in the #43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA 07–Gibson with a 1:39.224.
This was 0.569 seconds ahead of Pietro Fittipaldi in the #73 Pratt Miller Motorsports ORECA, which missed almost an hour of running changing the brakes after Fittipaldi felt the car wasn’t slowing properly on his installation laps.
The #99 AO Racing, #2 United Autosports USA and #11 TDS Racing cars completed the top five.
Intersport Racing kept us waiting for their return to IMSA, with the #37 ORECA not appearing during the opening two hours as the team finished putting the car together. The ORECA emerged with one hour and 12 minutes on the clock, with Jon Field and then Oliver Jarvis turning 23 laps and putting it eighth on the timesheets.
The session was interrupted by three Red Flags, all of them brief. The first was brought out inside the opening five minutes for the Valkyrie stopping, before delays caused by the #43 Inter Europol and #2 United LMP2 entries.
Track action at the IMSA Sanctioned Test resumes after a one-hour lunch break, with a further three hours and 30 minutes of running for GTP and LMP2 competitors this afternoon. The GT entries will join the action from tomorrow onwards.
Images © Brandon Badraoui / IMSA / Lumen
