Persistent rain showers on Saturday morning led to a wet and incident-filled second practice session for the Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America.
The action kicked off quite early into the one-hour, 45-minute practice when Brendon Iribe in the #70 Inception Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo spun off at turn one and got his car stuck in the gravel. This same fate also befell Marco Wittmann in the #25 BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8 with about 25 minutes to go.
At the 45-minute mark, Jack Hawksworth in the #14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 lost control on the exit of turn six, spun across the course and broadsided the concrete wall, damaging the right-side of the car that had won the last two races it has run.
After that, George Kurtz spun his #04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR ORECA 07-Gibson and got his rear wheels stuck in the soggy turf. These incidents combined to bring out four red flags, and all four cars will lose their fastest laps in Qualifying this afternoon.
Devlin DeFrancesco in the #28 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3 R also had a wild spin off into the turn five tire barrier, though he was able to keep the car running and return to the pits to fix some left-side damage.
Times improved throughout the session, and when the checkered flag fell, the #40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R recorded the fastest time in GTP, beating the #24 WRT BMW in second. The two Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06es finished third and fourth.
Jordan Taylor snuck into the top spot with a 2:07.647, set with less than two minutes to go, to edge ahead of WRT’s Sheldon van der Linde.
“It was a nice session,” Taylor said. “I mean it was the first time we’ve done a decent amount of running in the wet with this car, so we wanted to do as many laps as possible just to kind of learn as much as we could, just in case it rains tomorrow or rains at a future race, and we don’t have time to prepare for it. I think we learned a lot.
“Obviously we were quickest, but I think some guys didn’t go out and it seemed like traffic was a big swing if you got a clear lap or not. But yeah, I think for us we’re happy with it. If it rains tomorrow, I think we’re happy with how the car is and if it’s raining for qualifying, at least we have some test time on it to see what kind of changes we want to make.”
In LMP2, TDS Racing’s #11 ORECA led the #52 of Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen and the #99 of AO Racing. TDS Racing’s Mathias Beche set a 2:11.846.
A last-minute improvement propelled the two Ford Racing Mustang GT3 Evos to the top spots in GTD Pro, led by the #65 Ford of Christopher Mies who set a 2:21.494, narrowly ahead of teammate Dennis Olsen in the #64 Ford. The #911 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R timed in third, ahead of the #59 RLL Team McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.
And in GTD, the #81 DragonSpeed Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R took the top spot via a 2:21.468 from Casper Stevenson – the #912 Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche and the #21 AF Corse USA Ferrari completed the top three.
Qualifying starts at 3:25 PM CT (local time).
Images © Jack Webster / dailysportscar.com
