Daytona 24 Hours: WTR fastest, DragonSpeed bounces back
Final practice saw Jordan Taylor put the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac at the top of the times as DragonSpeed’s Oreca recovered from its Thursday shunt with a great lap.
#81 DragonSpeed ORECA 07: Henrik Hedman, Nicolas Lapierre, Ben Hanley, Loic Duval
Alexander Trienitz
Jordan Taylor sent the WTR Cadillac DPi-V.R around the 3.56-mile course in 1min36.970sec, while the polesitting Action Express #5 entry, this time driven by Christian Fittipaldi, grabbed P3.
But the story of the session lay between them. Nicolas Lapierre drove DragonSpeed’s Oreca into second place, and while he was almost one second slower than Taylor’s best, it was a remarkable rebound from the team’s troubles yesterday. Loic Duval shunted the team's original chassis hard enough during practice session that it forced the team to skip qualifying. In today’s practice, Lapierre proved the Elton Julian-owned team had aced the preparation of its new chassis.
Behind Fittipaldi, Neel Jani ran the Rebellion Oreca to fourth, while Rene Rast showed some decent form in the VisitFloridaRacing Riley, with P5.
In GT Le Mans, polewinner Joey Hand edged his Ford GT mere hundredths ahead of Dirk Werner in the Porsche 911 RSR, followed by Richard Westbrook (Ford) and Mike Rockenfeller in the Corvette C7.R.
Andrea Caldarelli put Paul Miller Racing’s Lamborghini Huracan to the top of the GT Daytona class, but it was bad session for another Lambo runner, Emmanuel Anassis, who shunted his DAC Motorsports car and lost a wheel at Turn 6, causing one of the session’s red flags.
Second fastest in GTD went to Jeroen Bleekemolen in the Mercedes-AMG GT3, ahead of Kaz Grala in Change Racing’s Lamborghini, Connor De Phillippi in the Land Motorsport Audi and former Indy Lights champion Tristan Vautier in another Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Prototype Challenge was headed by Gustavo Yacaman in the BAR1 Motorsports entry, with Robert Wickens P2 for Starworks.
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