Westbrook Sets Ford on Top in VIR Warmup

Richard Westbrook broke Porsche’s dominant streak at Virginia International Raceway by pacing the warmup ahead of today’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race.

Westbrook appeared at the top of the timing charts in the last five minutes of the 20-minute session with a time of 1:40.723 – the third-best of the weekend so far – behind the wheel of the No. 67 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT.

This put the Englishman half a second up on Tommy Milner, who recorded the second-best time of an incident-free warmup in the No. 4 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R.

The two Porsche 911 RSRs placed third and fourth with Laurens Vanthoor’s 1:41.301 in the No. 912 car marginally out-pacing the No. 911 of Nick Tandy.

Porsche had previously shared out the fastest laps in each of the sessions held so far, including three practices and yesterday’s qualifying, in which Vanthoor clinched pole.

Fifth-fastest in the warmup was Tom Blomqvist, in the No. 25 BMW M8 GTE.

In GT Daytona, Bill Auberlen controlled the session for Turner Motorsports, setting a session-best and weekend-best time of 1:43.449 at the wheel of the team’s BMW M6 GT3.

Auberlen ended up beating the Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Jeroen Bleekemolen by 0.147 seconds, while the next car in the order was over a second off the class pace.

This was the No. 74 Lone Star Racing Mercedes with Lawson Aschenbach at the controls.

Today’s race, which also counts towards the GTD IMSA WeatherTech Sprint Cup, is set to go green at 1:35 p.m. ET.

RESULTS: Warmup