Kobayashi puts WTR Cadillac on top at Daytona

As teams completed the second session in a three-day test before the Rolex 24, Kobayashi lapped the 3.56-mile course in 1min36.596sec in the WTR Cadillac DPi-V.R that he’ll share with Fernando Alonso and IMSA fulltimers Jordan Taylor and Renger van der Zande.

That was just enough to beat Jonathan Bomarito in the #55 Mazda RT24-P by a mere eight thousandths of a second, and this morning’s pacesetting Mazda, this time driven by Timo Bernhard, by a quarter second.

Argentine touring car star Agustin Canapino was a very impressive fourth fastest for IMSA Prototype debutants Juncos Racing, who will be campaigning the #50 Cadillac.

Helio Castroneves was fifth in the faster of the two Acura Team Penske ARX-05s, with the Action Express Cadillacs next up in the hands of Felipe Nasr and Mike Conway.

CORE autosport, which switched from P2 to DPi for 2019 to run the Nissan program, was an encouraging eighth, less than a second off the ultimate pace, thanks to the best effort of Colin Braun.

PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports’ Matt McMurry was fastest of the three LMP2 cars that took part, but Ben Hanley was a mere 0.2sec slower as DragonSpeed hit the track.

Davide Rigon put Risi Competizione on top in GT Le Mans, lapping the course 0.131sec faster than the best of the Ford GTs, driven by Ryan Briscoe, while Antonio Garcia was third in one of the two Corvette C7.Rs.

Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber in this morning’s pacesetting Porsche 911 RSRs were fourth and fifth, followed by the second Corvette, second Ford and the two BMW M8s.

Jeroen Bleekemolen again topped GT Daytona for Riley Motorsports ahead of Daniel Serra’s Spirit of Race Ferrari 488, and Jens Klingmann in the Turner Motorsport BMW M6.

Katherine Legge was fourth in Meyer Shank Racing’s all-woman-piloted Acura NSX, while Jack Hawksworth slotted the Lexus RC F of AIM Vasser Sullivan into fifth.

Combined Day 1 Roar times (Top 10):

Pos.	No.	Drivers	Team	Morning	Afternoon
1	77	Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez Timo Bernhard Rene Rast	Mazda Team Joest	1'35.989	1'36.838
2	10	Renger van der Zande Jordan Taylor Fernando Alonso Kamui Kobayashi	Wayne Taylor Racing	1'36.407	1'36.596
3	55	Jonathan Bomarito Harry Tincknell Olivier Pla	Mazda Team Joest	1'36.449	1'36.604
4	31	Pipo Derani Felipe Nasr Eric Curran	Action Express Racing	1'36.781	1'37.187
5	5	Joao Barbosa Filipe Albuquerque Christian Fittipaldi Mike Conway	Action Express Racing	1'36.872	1'37.202
6	50	Kyle Kaiser Will Owen Rene Binder Agustin Canapino	Juncos Racing	1'37.235	1'37.128
7	7	Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor Alexander Rossi	Acura Team Penske	1'37.825	1'37.174
8	54	Jon Bennett Colin Braun Romain Dumas Loic Duval	CORE autosport	no time	1'37.522
9	85	Tristan Vautier Misha Goikhberg Rubens Barrichello Devlin DeFrancesco	JDC-Miller Motorsports	1'37.678	1'38.036
10	84	Simon Trummer Stephen Simpson Chris Miller Juan Piedrahita	JDC-Miller Motorsports	1'37.966	1'41.135