Rolex 24: Taylor’s Acura leads Mazdas in FP2
Despite completing just two flying laps, Ricky Taylor topped second practice for the first race of the 2020 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.
Taylor’s #7 Acura ARX-05 lapped the 3.56-mile course in 1min34.904sec which left him 0.215sec clear of Oliver Jarvis’ best effort in the #77 Mazda RT24-P, with Harry Tincknell third in the second Mazda a further 0.3sec in arrears.
Ryan Briscoe’s best effort in the top Cadillac DPi-V.R, the Wayne Taylor Racing entry, left him fourth ahead of the Filipe Albuquerque’s Action Express Racing Caddy, and the similar JDC-Miller MotorSports cars of Matheus Leist and Loic Duval.
Team Penske focused on practicing driver changes and scrubbing in tires, and while Taylor topped the times, the #6 sister car set no representative lap times.
Ben Hanley led LMP2 for DragonSpeed with a time 2.5sec off Taylor’s best but 0.9sec better than the best effort of David Heinemeier Hansson, second quickest in the Tower Motorsport by Starworks entry.
The two Porsche 911 RSR-19s again topped GT Le Mans thanks to Laurens Vanthoor and Nick Tandy, while the two new Corvette C8.Rs of Antonio Garcia and Tommy Milner were third and fourth.
Alessandro Pier Guidi in the Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 split the two Rahal Letterman Lanigan-run BMW M8s to take sixth.
Robby Foley is continuing the strong form he showed in 2019 for Turner Motorsports, his BMW M6 GT3 leading GT Daytona ahead of Zacharie Robichon in the Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, Franck Perera’s #11 Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini Huracan and the similar Lambo of Bryan Sellers of Paul Miller Racing.
However, both the #11 Grasser car and the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage will be held on pitlane for 5mins during the third practice session as penalty for rejoining the race track after the GTD practice period had ended.
Qualifying begins at 4.15pm local (Eastern) time.
Session results:
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About this article
| Series | IMSA |
| Event | Daytona 24 |
| Author | David Malsher-Lopez |
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