Albuquerque Paces Opening Road America Practice

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Filipe Albuquerque led the way in the opening practice session of the weekend for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at Road America.

Albuquerque took his No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 to a quick lap of 1:51.089, edging out the No. 25 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 of Connor De Phillippi by 0.411 seconds.

Sebastien Bourdais was third quickest in the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing-run Cadillac V-Series.R, followed by Felipe Nasr, who like Albuquerque, made a late-session improvement to go fourth quickest in the No. 7 Penske Porsche 963

Louis Deletraz completed the top-five in the No. 40 WTRAndretti Acura, with Gianmaria Bruni sixth in the No. 5 Proton Competition Porsche and Jesse Krohn seventh with his No. 24 BMW.

Jack Aitken, Nick Tandy and Tijmen van der Helm completed the top-ten in GTP for Action Express Racing, Porsche Penske and JDC-Miller Motorsports, respectively.

LMP2 was led by the No. 22 United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibson of Paul Di Resta, thanks to a 1:53.486 lap time.

It was 0.607 seconds quicker than the second-placed No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, which caused the session’s first red flag when Nick Boulle picked up a Michelin sign board in Turn 13.

The second red, which brought the session to an early end with three minutes to go, was for the No. 45 WTRAndretti Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Danny Formal, who spun into the Turn 14 gravel trap.

Inception Racing’s Frederik Schandorff led the way in the GT ranks, putting his GTD class McLaren 720S GT3 Evo atop the time sheets.

The 2:05.242 lap time was 0.127 seconds quicker than the GTD Pro pace-setting No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Antonio Garcia.

Mike Rockenfeller was second quickest in GTD Pro in his No. 64 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3, followed by the No. 4 Corvette of Nicky Catsburg.

The second and final WeatherTech Championship practice session is scheduled for Saturday at 9:55 a.m. CDT, followed by qualifying in the afternoon.

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