Nasr Tops Opening Practice at Long Beach

Photo: Brian Cleary/BCPix.com

Felipe Nasr led the way in opening practice for tomorrow’s Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix of Long Beach, putting Cadillac on top of the time charts.

The Brazilian reeled off a 1:12.394 lap time in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R to edge out the pair of Team Penske Acura ARX-05 entries in the two-hour session.

Ricky Taylor was second on the time sheets in the No. 7 Acura DPi, followed by teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, with the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac DPi fourth in the hands of Joao Barbosa.

The No. 54 CORE autosport Nissan DPi of Colin Braun completed the top-five.

Jordan Taylor, who is recovering from a medical procedure earlier this week, turned laps in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R to set the seventh quickest time.

Taylor is expected to race, despite the presence of Kamui Kobyashi here as a reserve driver.

It was a session to forget for JDC-Miller Motorsports, which saw both of its Cadillac DPis find the walls and bring out seperate red flags.

Misha Goikhberg made contact with the Turn 4 barriers to trigger the first red with 1 hour and 7 minutes to go while teammate Simon Trummer had an incident in Turn 1 less than 20 minutes later.

Trummer’s No. 84 entry continued to the pits, while the No. 85 JDC-Miller entry ended the session on a roll-back.

Porsche Goes 1-2 in GTLM

Porsche GT Team dominated the GT Le Mans ranks, with the pair of CORE autosport-run Porsche 911 RSRs ending the session 1-2 on the time charts.

Nick Tandy laid down a 1:17.549 in the No. 911 Porsche to edge out teammate Earl Bamber by 0.244 seconds.

The No. 4 Corvette C7.R of Oliver Gavin was third quickest in class, followed by Jesse Krohn’s No. 24 Team RLL BMW M8 GTE in fourth.

Practice 2 gets underway at 4:45 p.m. PT, followed immediately by qualifying later in the early evening.

RESULTS: Practice 1

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John