Practice report
IMSA Long Beach
Long Beach IMSA: Nasr beats the Acuras in first practice
Action Express Racing Cadillac driver Felipe Nasr set the pace in opening practice for this weekend's Long Beach IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship round, narrowly edging both Team Penske-run Acuras.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Apr 12, 2019, 7:03 PM
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Nasr, who is skipping this weekend's Rome Formula E round to race at Long Beach, set his best lap of 1m12.794s with just seven minutes to run in the two-hour session, establishing a new unofficial IMSA track record around the 1.968-mile street course in the process.
The Brazilian driver had been at the head of the times when the first of two stoppages was caused by Misha Goikhberg's JDC-Miller Cadillac DPi.V-R hitting the wall at Turn 4, after 50 minutes of running.
Almost as soon as the session had resumed, the sister JDC-Miller Caddy of Simon Trummer went off at Turn 1, bringing the red flags out again, and action resumed with just under 50 minutes remaining.
Dane Cameron moved the #6 Acura ARX-05 to the top of the times shortly afterwards, becoming the first driver to dip into the 1m12s, before Nasr's teammate in the Sebring 12 Hours-winning #31 Cadillac, Pipo Derani, and then the #7 Acura of Ricky Taylor enjoyed spells out front.
Joao Barbosa briefly put the #5 AXR Cadillac ahead with just over 20 minutes to go, before Taylor and Cameron's teammate Juan Pablo Montoya temporarily made it an Acura 1-2 with a pair of fast laps.
After Nasr's last-ditch flyer, Taylor was left 0.141s off the pace in second in the car he shares with Helio Castroneves, with Montoya and Cameron a further 0.034s behind.
Barbosa had to be content with fourth, ahead of Colin Braun in the CORE autosport Nissan DPi and Jonathan Bomarito in the best of the Mazda RT-24Ps.
Seventh-fastest was the Rolex 24 winning-Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac shared by Renger van der Zande and Jordan Taylor, who is recovering from an emergency appendectomy.
Taylor completed just an installation lap at the start of the session but took the wheel for the final 15 minutes or so, working down to a best time of 1m12.973s - 0.579s off the pace of Nasr.
Kamui Kobayashi, who raced alongside van der Zande and Taylor - as well as Fernando Alonso - in Daytona, is in Long Beach on standby in case Taylor is unable to race.
#911 Porsche GT Team, Porsche 911 RSR: Nick Tandy, Patrick Pilet
Photo by: Porsche
Porsche leads GTLM
Porsche led the way in the GT Le Mans division, with Nick Tandy leaving it late to post a best time of 1m17.758s in the #911 911 RSR - deposing Earl Bamber's sister car by 0.244s.
Oliver Gavin put the best of the Corvette C7.Rs in third, a further three tenths back, closely followed by Jesse Krohn in the leading BMW M8 GTE and the second Corvette of Antonio Garcia.
The two Chip Ganassi Racing-run Ford GTs were sixth and seventh-fastest, ahead of the second BMW, which brought up the rear of the 19-car field.
Practice times:
Pos. No. Drivers Class Chassis Time Gap 1 31 
Pipo Derani
Felipe Nasr DPi Cadillac DPi 1'12.394 2 7 Helio Castroneves
Ricky Taylor DPi Acura DPi 1'12.535 0.141 3 6 
Juan Pablo Montoya
Dane Cameron DPi Acura DPi 1'12.569 0.175 4 5 
Filipe Albuquerque
Joao Barbosa DPi Cadillac DPi 1'12.583 0.189 5 54 Jon Bennett
Colin Braun DPi Nissan DPi 1'12.755 0.361 6 55 
Harry Tincknell
Jonathan Bomarito DPi Mazda DPi 1'12.861 0.467 7 10 Jordan Taylor
Renger van der Zande DPi Cadillac DPi 1'12.973 0.579 8 77 Oliver Jarvis
Tristan Nunez DPi Mazda DPi 1'13.101 0.707 9 85 
Mikhail Goikhberg
Tristan Vautier DPi Cadillac DPi 1'13.338 0.944 10 84 
Simon Trummer
Stephen Simpson DPi Cadillac DPi 1'13.339 0.945 11 50 Kyle Kaiser
Will Owen DPi Cadillac DPi 1'13.399 1.005 12 911 Nick Tandy
Patrick Pilet GTLM Porsche 911 RSR 1'17.549 5.155 13 912 
Earl Bamber
Laurens Vanthoor GTLM Porsche 911 RSR 1'17.793 5.399 14 4 Oliver Gavin
Tommy Milner GTLM Chevrolet Corvette C7.R 1'18.091 5.697 15 24 John Edwards
Jesse Krohn GTLM BMW M8 GTE 1'18.124 5.730 16 3 
Jan Magnussen
Antonio Garcia GTLM Chevrolet Corvette C7.R 1'18.324 5.930 17 67 
Ryan Briscoe
Richard Westbrook GTLM Ford GT 1'18.433 6.039 18 66 Sébastien Bourdais
Dirk Muller GTLM Ford GT 1'18.555 6.161 19 25 Connor de Phillippi
Tom Blomqvist GTLM BMW M8 GTE 1'18.685 6.291
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