WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — WeatherTech SportsCar Championship logged their first track time of the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen weekend with a 90-minute practice Friday afternoon.
Conditions started hot and humid with the prospect of precipitation in the air. Raindrops could be felt and seen on car windshields throughout the session, but it never rained hard enough to soak the track or require treaded Michelin wet-weather tires.
Dane Cameron set the early benchmark lap time of 1 minute, 34.175 seconds (129.970) in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 to lead the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) and overall times. The slight moisture in the air and a late interruption for a red flag prevented anyone from beating that time, with Tom Blomqvist coming closest in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R at 1:34.347 (129.733 mph).
Both the red flags that punctuated the session were caused by the No. 8 Tower Motorsport ORECA 07 LMP2 in the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class. John Farano took off the car’s rear wing with an early spin, while Charlie Eastwood left the car with left-front damage in a crash at turn seven just 14 minutes before the end of the session. Eastwood still ended fourth fastest in the LMP2 class, which was paced by Mikkel Jensen in the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA at 1:35.531 (128.125 mph).
In the GT classes, the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R known as ‘Rexy’ continued its recent strong form in GTD PRO as Laurin Heinrich was quickest by more than a third of a second over Bryan Sellers in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3. Scott Andrews in the No. 80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 topped the GTD timesheet, splitting the GTD PRO frontrunners.