Petit Le Mans IMSA: Bourdais leads FP2 in Ganassi Cadillac

For much of the session, the top five Prototypes were covered by just 0.11sec, with Renger van der Zande in the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac setting a 70.264sec, leading the stablemate #02 car’s endurance extra Ryan Hunter-Reay by 0.061sec. Loic Duval in the JDC Miller Motorsports entry made it a Caddy 1-2-3, mere hundredths behind, the team having fixed its faulty brake-bias lever which had caused the car to have an off in FP1.

At this point, Helio Castroneves of Meyer Shank Racing was fourth fastest in the quickest of the Acura ARX-05s ahead of Mike Conway in the Action Express Racing Cadillac.

Then with 37mins of the session remaining, the LMP2 championship-leading Tower Motorsports entry of Rui Pinto de Andrade plowed off the track at Turn 1, and hit the tire wall, while lying second in class behind Ryan Dalziel in the Era Motorsports machine. Thankfully the damage wasn’t hard enough to prevent Andrade to head back to the pits under his own power.

With 20mins to go, Bamber shaved a couple of hundredths off Hunter-Reay’s time to edge slightly closer to van der Zande’s benchmark, before getting pushed back to the paddock for a checkover after slight contact with a GT car. Tom Blomqvist also moved the MSR Acura up into third.

Then, with 15mins remaining, championship leader Ricky Taylor delivered the first lap of the session under the 70sec barrier with a 69.858sec for Wayne Taylor Racing. With seven minutes remaining, Blomqvist put this into perspective, working down to a 69.342sec, a quarter second ahead of the impressive Tristan Vautier of JDC Miller and a further tenth up on Sebastien Bourdais in the #01 Ganassi Caddy.

Once Blomqvist pitted, Kamui Kobayashi in the ‘extra’ Action Express Cadillac and Vautier both trimmed their deficit to the MSR Acura to under one-tenth. But Bourdais wasn’t done yet, taking a full three tenths out of Blomqvist to end the session on top with a 69.040.

Dalziel’s 1min11.656sec flyer remained the top of the LMP2 times, three-tenths ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya in the DragonSpeed machine and Anders Fjordbach of High Class Racing.

The PR1/Mathiasen LMP2 car that Scott Huffaker crashed this morning gained no laps until the last five minutes of the LMP2 class’s track time, with Mikkel Jensen at least able to shake down the car.

Kay van Berlo put Riley Motorsports on top in LMP3 ahead of Gabby Chaves of Andretti Autosport and Nolan Siegel in the Garett Grist of the Jr III team.

GTD Pro was led by Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F of Jack Hawksworth, a shocking 0.645se faster than Jesse Krohn in the Rahal Letterman Lanigan-run BMW M4, while Antonio Garcia’s final flyer sent the Corvette C8.R into third, a further 0.15sec adrift.

Vasser Sullivan Lexus also topped GTD, Richard Heistand delivering an excellent 79.853sec to beat Erik Johanasson in the Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 by just 0.006sec!

Third in class was Russell Ward’s Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT3 ahead of the similar car of Stevan McAleer in the Team Korthoff machine. Then came the Cetilar Racing Ferrari 488 of Ulysse de Pauw ahead of Simon Mann’s AF Corse Ferrari.

Magnus Racing’s GTD Aston Martin required an engine change and missed the session.

The third, 90-minute practice session will commence at 7.30pm local (Eastern) time.

Petit Le Mans - FP2 results:

Cla	Num	Driver	Class	Chassis	Time	Gap
1	01	Renger van der Zande Sébastien Bourdais Scott Dixon	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'09.040
2	60	Oliver Jarvis Tom Blomqvist Helio Castroneves	DPi	Acura DPi	1'09.342	0.302
3	48	Mike Rockenfeller Kamui Kobayashi Jimmie Johnson	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'09.425	0.385
4	5	Tristan Vautier Richard Westbrook Loic Duval	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'09.438	0.398
5	31	Olivier Pla Pipo Derani Mike Conway	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'09.772	0.732
6	10	Ricky Taylor Filipe Albuquerque Brendon Hartley	DPi	Acura DPi	1'09.858	0.818
7	02	Earl Bamber Alex Lynn Ryan Hunter-Reay	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'10.307	1.267
8	18	Dwight Merriman Ryan Dalziel Christian Rasmussen	LMP2	ORECA LMP2 07	1'11.656	2.616
9	81	Henrik Hedman Juan Pablo Montoya Sebastian Montoya	LMP2	ORECA LMP2 07	1'11.987	2.947
10	20	Dennis Andersen Anders Fjordbach Fabio Scherer	LMP2	ORECA LMP2 07	1'11.991	2.951
11	8	John Farano Louis Deletraz Rui Andrade	LMP2	ORECA LMP2 07	1'12.132	3.092
12	11	Steven Thomas Josh Pierson Tristan Nunez	LMP2	ORECA LMP2 07	1'12.254	3.214
13	52	Ben Keating Mikkel Jensen Scott Huffaker	LMP2	ORECA LMP2 07	1'14.894	5.854
14	74	Gar Robinson Felipe Fraga Kay van Berlo	LMP3	Ligier JS P320	1'15.569	6.529
15	36	Jarett Andretti Gabby Chaves Josh Burdon	LMP3	Ligier JS P320	1'15.798	6.758
16	30	Ari Balogh Garett Grist Nolan Siegel	LMP3	Ligier JS P320	1'16.260	7.220
17	13	Orey Fidani Matthew Bell Lars Kern	LMP3	Duqueine D08	1'16.321	7.281
18	33	Joao Barbosa Malthe Jakobsen Nicolas Pino	LMP3	Ligier JS P320	1'16.560	7.520
19	38	Daniel Goldburg Cameron Shields Tyler Maxson	LMP3	Ligier JS P320	1'17.445	8.405
20	76	Anthony Mantella Kyle Marcelli Josh Sarchet	LMP3	Duqueine D08	1'17.793	8.753
21	54	Jon Bennett Colin Braun George Kurtz	LMP3	Ligier JS P320	1'18.107	9.067
22	14	Jack Hawksworth Ben Barnicoat Kyle Kirkwood	GTD PRO	Lexus RC F GT3	1'18.912	9.872
23	25	Connor de Phillippi John Edwards Jesse Krohn	GTD PRO	BMW M4 GT3	1'19.557	10.517
24	3	Antonio Garcia Jordan Taylor Nick Catsburg	GTD PRO	Corvette C8.R GTD	1'19.718	10.678
25	12	Frankie Montecalvo Aaron Telitz Richard Heistand	GTD	Lexus RC F GT3	1'19.853	10.813
26	1	Bryan Sellers Madison Snow Erik Johansson	GTD	BMW M4 GT3	1'19.859	10.819
27	62	Daniel Serra Davide Rigon James Calado	GTD PRO	Ferrari 488 GT3	1'20.038	10.998
28	23	Ross Gunn Alex Riberas Tom Gamble	GTD PRO	Aston Martin Vantage GT3	1'20.078	11.038
29	9	Matt Campbell Mathieu Jaminet Felipe Nasr	GTD PRO	Porsche 911 GT3 R	1'20.175	11.135
30	57	Russell Ward Philip Ellis Marvin Dienst	GTD	Mercedes AMG GT3	1'20.189	11.149
31	32	Mike Skeen Stevan McAleer Dirk Muller	GTD	Mercedes AMG GT3	1'20.204	11.164
32	47	Roberto Lacorte Giorgio Sernagiotto Ulysse De	GTD	Ferrari 488 GT3	1'20.269	11.229
33	21	Simon Mann Luis Perez Companc Toni Vilander	GTD	Ferrari 488 GT3	1'20.292	11.252
34	96	Robby Foley Bill Auberlen Michael Dinan	GTD	BMW M4 GT3	1'20.299	11.259
35	16	Ryan Hardwick Zacharie Robichon Jan Heylen	GTD	Porsche 911 GT3 R	1'20.311	11.271
36	79	Maximilian Buhk Mikael Grenier Maximillian Goetz	GTD PRO	Mercedes AMG GT3	1'20.439	11.399
37	70	Brendan Iribe Jordan Lee Pepper Sebastian Priaulx	GTD	McLaren 720S GT3	1'20.659	11.619
38	27	Roman De Angelis Maxime Martin Ian James	GTD	Aston Martin Vantage GT3	1'20.672	11.632
39	39	Robert Megennis Corey Lewis Jeff Westphal	GTD	Lamborghini Huracan GT3	1'20.675	11.635
40	42	Jaden Conwright Marco Holzer Don Yount	GTD	Lamborghini Huracan GT3	1'20.723	11.683
41	66	Kyffin Simpson Till Bechtolsheimer Mario Farnbacher	GTD	Acura NSX GT3	1'20.785	11.745
42	99	Rob Ferriol Katherine Legge Nicholas Boulle	GTD	Porsche 911 GT3 R	1'21.727	12.687
43	44	John Potter Andy Lally Spencer Pumpelly	GTD	Aston Martin Vantage GT3
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