Cadillac Completes Unbeaten Practice Run

Cadillac continued its stranglehold on the top of the timesheets in practice for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, as Action Express Racing’s Pipo Derani set the fastest time in the final session ahead of this weekend’s race.

Having topped third practice on Thursday night, pole man Derani was again the driver to beat on Friday morning as he turned a best lap of 1:36.131 aboard the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R 17 minutes into the one-hour session.

Derani deposed the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Connor De Philippi, whose best lap of 1:36.222 was good enough for second ahead of the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac in which Sebastien Bourdais set the quickest time.

Completing the top five were the two customer Porsche 963s, the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports car of Richard Westbrook leading the No. 5 Proton Competition machine of Neel Jani, while the two Penske-run factory 963s were next up in sixth and seventh.

Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti’s pair of Acura ARX-06s were eighth- and ninth-fastest.

Mikkel Jensen set the pace in the LMP2 class aboard the No. 11 TDS Racing Oreca 07 Gibson with a best time of 1:39.078, which was quick enough to beat the remaining GTP car, the No. 24 BMW.

Second and third in class were the No. 88 AF Corse and No. 18 Era Motorsport entries of Matthieu Vaxiviere and Ryan Dalziel respectively.

A crash for Lance Willsey in the No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P217 at Turn 2 brought out the red flags with 15 minutes left on the clock, with action resuming six minutes later.

In GTD, Porsche factory driver Thomas Preining was the driver to beat with a best time of 1:47.072 in the No. 43 Andretti Motorsports 911 GT3 R.

Best of the GTD Pro runners and second of the GTDs overall was the No. 33 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 driven by Matteo Cairoli with a 1:47.239, 0.147 seconds up on the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 of Daniel Serra.

Jens Klingmann was second-fastest in GTD in the No. 96 Turner Motorsports BMW M4 GT3 ahead of the No. 023 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari of Ricardo Agostini.

The Paul Miller Racing BMW was only able to complete two laps before it was struck by what was described by the team as a “random” driveline failure, while the two AWA Corvettes did not appear on track at all as planned by the team.

The 62nd running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona is scheduled to commence Saturday at 1.40 p. m. ET.

RESULTS: Practice 4