Duval Paces Thursday Night Practice for CORE

Loic Duval put the CORE autosport Nissan Onroak DPi on top of the prototype timing sheets in the Rolex 24 at Daytona night practice session.

The Frenchman’s leading time of 1:34.979 held out as the quickest despite a late challenge from Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R.

Albuquerque moved to 0.119 seconds of Duval’s marker, pushing the Cadillac ahead of Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud in the two Team Penske Acura ARX-05 DPi cars.

Kamui Kobayashi lapped fifth-quickest in the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac, half a second off the overall pace, while Felipe Nasr ran sixth in the second Action Express machine.

Duval’s time was consolidated by CORE co-driver Colin Braun, who was the third-fastest driver of the night run behind Albuquerque.

Neither of the Mazda RT24-Ps turned laps in Thursday evening practice after Team Joest elected to carry out separate planned engine changes.

Augusto Farfus set the fastest lap in GT Le Mans for BMW Team RLL.

The Brazilian driver’s time of 1:43.315 was just 0.002 seconds quicker than the clas pole-sitting Porsche 911 RSR in the hands of Patrick Pilet.

BMW also led the way in GT Daytona with Bill Auberlen posting a 1:45.165 to put the Turner Motorsport-entered M6 GT3 on top, while Ben Hanley paced LMP2 in the No. 81 DragonSpeed Oreca 07 Gibson.

The evening session was interrupted by a brief red flag period with half an hour remaining which was caused by the Montaplast by Land-Motorsport Audi stopping on-track with an apparent mechanical issue.

RESULTS: Practice 3