MONTEREY, Calif. – IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Daytona Prototype international points leader Juan Pablo Montoya posted the fastest time in Friday’s practice sessions at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
If the time charts are any indication, the competition this weekend is going to be close.
Montoya lapped the 2.238-mile WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca circuit at one minute, 16.003 (106.006 mph) to lead the way in the No. 6 Acura Team Penske ARX-05 that he shares with co-driver Dane Cameron.
His lap was just 0.078 seconds quicker than the best time posted by Felipe Nasr in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R of 1:16.081 (105.897 mph).
“It’s good,” Montoya said. “It’s close. The difficult part is Sunday is going to be a lot cooler, so it’s a lot different racetrack. I don’t know, we’ll see. Hopefully it plays into our hands a little bit. It seems like we’ve got decent pace. It’s hard to know what everybody can do, but we’re pretty happy with that.”
Nasr and his co-driver, Pipo Derani, are the closest championship pursuers of Montoya and Cameron, sitting seven points out of the lead with two races remaining on the schedule. Derani also is the defending champion of the Monterey SportsCar Championship Powered by McLaren, winning here last year with then-co-driver Johannes van Overbeek in the No. 22 Nissan DPi.
Oliver Jarvis was third on the day with a best lap of 1:16.421 (105.426 mph) in the No. 77 Mazda Team Joest RT-24P DPi he shares with Tristan Nunez. Mazda Team Joest has won the last three WeatherTech Championship DPi races this season.
Richard Westbrook posted what held up as the fastest practice lap in GT Le Mans in the morning session, but the No. 67 was last among the eight cars in class in the afternoon’s hour practice.
Westbrook wasn’t disillusioned by the practice two result, however.
“We learned a lot that session,” said Westbrook, who turned a lap of 1:22.548 in the first practice but was nearly 1.7 seconds slower in the second session in the No. 67 Ford GT. “Sometimes when you’re not fast, you learn a lot more. It was a good race simulation, let’s put it that way.”
Antonio Garcia posted the best lap in the afternoon practice – and second overall to Westbrook for the day – at 1:22.833 in the No. 3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C7.R. On top of the tire degradation issue, teams were also left scratching their heads Friday due to sizzling warm ambient temperatures that aren’t expected to last to Sunday’s race.
In GT Daytona, it was a productive Friday for the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3 squad and co-drivers Bryan Sellers and Corey Lewis.
Sellers posted the fastest lap in both of the day’s practice sessions, ending with a best overall lap of 1:25.246 (94.512 mph) in the afternoon session.
“We had a great day, actually, today,” Sellers said. “We were able to finish both sessions P1 and that’s a great start to the weekend. It’s way better than where we’ve been in a couple of previous races. It’s pretty confidence-inspiring moving into the remainder of the weekend, but there’s a part of you that has to keep reality in check and understand that it is still early in the weekend and it’s just practice.”
Toni Vilander was second in GTD on Friday with a best lap of 1:25.271 (94.484 mph) in the No. 63 WeatherTech Ferrari 488 GT3 he shares with his Scuderia Corsa teammate Cooper MacNeil. Third quickest was Matt Plumb in the No. 76 Compass Racing McLaren 720S GT3 at 1:25.323 (94.426 mph).
In LMP2, driving the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA LMP2, Kyle Masson posted a best time of 1:18.208 (103.017 mph) to lead class practice for Sunday’s Monterey SportsCar Championship Powered by McLaren.
Masson will co-drive with Cameron Cassels and is looking for his second LMP2 win of the season.