Mid-Ohio IMSA: Montoya tops wet opening practice

Appropriately the Acura Team Penske ARX-05 of Juan Pablo Montoya set fastest time in the opening session for this weekend’s Acura Sports Car Challenge, the fourth round of the 2019 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

With off-and-on rain keeping the 2.258-mile road course soaked, the Prototype’s laps were around half a minute off Helio Castroneves’ pole position time from 2018, but a lap of 1min41.568sec kept Montoya ahead of the best of the GT Le Mans class cars which enjoyed a rare moment of prominence. However, Montoya did stop on track just before the Prototypes received the checkered flag.

Earl Bamber was second overall in the #912 Porsche 911RSR, ahead of the BMW M8 of Tom Blomqvist.

Thus Colin Braun was second in class but only fourth overall in the CORE autosport-run Nissan DPi, some 3sec off Montoya’s benchmark, but ahead of the second Acura of Ricky Taylor.

Oliver Gavin’s third place in GTLM was enough to place him sixth overall for Corvette Racing ahead of the second Porsche of Patrick Pilet.

Fastest of the GT Daytona runners and eighth overall was Trent Hindman in the #86 Acura NSX run by Meyer Shank Racing, 0.4sec ahead of Zacharie Robichon’s best effort tin the Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, and Alex Ribeiras in the Moorespeed Audi R8.

Jack Hawksworth ran the AIM Vasser-Sullivan Lexus RC F into fourth ahead of Bill Auberlen in the BMW M6 of Turner Motorsports.

Second practice is due to start at 3.15pm local (Eastern) time.

Cla	Num	Driver	Class	Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval

1	6	Dane Cameron Juan Pablo Montoya	DPi	Acura DPi	18	1'41.568
2	912	Earl Bamber Laurens Vanthoor	GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	23	1'42.230	0.662	0.662
3	25	Tom Blomqvist Connor de Phillippi	GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	22	1'44.438	2.870	2.208
4	54	Jon Bennett Colin Braun	DPi	Nissan DPi	15	1'44.615	3.047	0.177
5	7	Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor	DPi	Acura DPi	19	1'45.426	3.858	0.811
6	4	Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner	GTLM	Corvette C7.R	20	1'46.263	4.695	0.837
7	911	Patrick Pilet Nick Tandy	GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	23	1'46.604	5.036	0.341
8	86	Mario Farnbacher Trent Hindman	GTD	Acura NSX GT3	6	1'46.649	5.081	0.045
9	9	Scott Hargrove Zacharie Robichon	GTD	Porsche 911 GT3 R	12	1'47.047	5.479	0.398
10	19	Will Hardeman Alex Riberas	GTD	Audi R8 LMS GT3	21	1'47.051	5.483	0.004
11	14	Richard Heistand Jack Hawksworth	GTD	Lexus RC F GT3	24	1'47.532	5.964	0.481
12	96	Bill Auberlen Robby Foley	GTD	BMW M6 GT3	25	1'47.640	6.072	0.108
13	76	Paul Holton Matt Plumb	GTD	McLaren 720S GT3	18	1'48.260	6.692	0.620
14	12	Frankie Montecalvo Townsend Bell	GTD	Lexus RC F GT3	22	1'48.739	7.171	0.479
15	48	Bryan Sellers Ryan Hardwick	GTD	Lamborghini Huracan GT3	21	1'49.577	8.009	0.838
16	44	John Potter Andy Lally	GTD	Lamborghini Huracan GT3	5	1'49.709	8.141	0.132
17	63	Cooper MacNeil Toni Vilander	GTD	Ferrari 488 GT3	17	1'50.616	9.048	0.907
18	74	Gar Robinson Lawson Aschenbach	GTD	Mercedes-AMG	16	1'52.262	10.694	1.646
19	8	Parker Chase Ryan Dalziel	GTD	Audi R8 LMS GT3	4	1'54.092	12.524	1.830
20	57	Katherine Legge Christina Nielsen	GTD	Acura NSX GT3	6	1'54.120	12.552	0.028
21	3	Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia	GTLM	Corvette C7.R	6	1'55.261	13.693	1.141
22	77	Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez	DPi	Mazda DPi	4	1'57.821	16.253	2.560
23	5	Joao Barbosa Filipe Albuquerque	DPi	Cadillac DPi
24	10	Renger van der Zande Jordan Taylor	DPi	Cadillac DPi
25	24	Jesse Krohn John Edwards	GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	2
26	31	Felipe Nasr Pipo Derani	DPi	Cadillac DPi
27	33	Ben Keating Jeroen Bleekemolen	GTD	Mercedes-AMG GT3
28	38	Kyle Masson Cameron Cassels	LMP2	ORECA LMP2
29	50	Will Owen Kyle Kaiser	DPi	Cadillac DPi
30	52	Matt McMurry Eric Lux	LMP2	ORECA LMP2
31	55	Jonathan Bomarito Ryan Hunter-Reay	DPi	Mazda DPi	2
32	66	Sébastien Bourdais Dirk Muller	GTLM	Ford GT	2
33	67	Ryan Briscoe Richard Westbrook	GTLM	Ford GT	1
34	73	Patrick Long Marco Seefried	GTD	Porsche 911 GT3 R	3
35	84	Simon Trummer Stephen Simpson	DPi	Cadillac DPi
36	85	Mikhail Goikhberg Tristan Vautier	DPi	Cadillac DPi