Bourdais, Ford GT Lead Wet Second Practice Overall at Daytona

Sebastien Bourdais topped the time charts in the second practice session on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, which marks the first time one of the new Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GTs has led an official weekend session.

To boot, with track conditions at the 3.56-mile road course affected by intensifying rain, Bourdais’ No. 66 Ford led overall in the GT Le Mans class.

Bourdais’ best time in the session was 1:56.024, which was nearly one second off the pace of the best GTLM time from Thursday morning, a 1:55.078 by Toni Vilander in the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GTE.

Giancarlo Fisichella took the Risi Ferrari to second in this session at 1:56.420, with James Calado third in the No. 72 SMP Racing Ferrari at 1:56.492.

Other class leaders in the largely irrelevant session were Mikhail Aleshin, in the No. 37 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR01 Nissan in Prototype, Johnny Mowlem, in the No. 20 BAR1 Motorsports Oreca FLM09 in Prototype Challenge and Maxime Martin, in the No. 97 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 in GT Daytona.

Two red flags interrupted the 30-minute session. Renger van der Zande came to a stop in the Bus Stop chicane in the No. 8 Starworks Motorsport Oreca FLM09 nine minutes into the session.

A second red flew for debris from multiple GT Daytona cars, including the No. 007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3.

Qualifying is set to begin at 4 p.m. ET and local time, starting with the GTD class out first.

RESULTS: Practice 2