Penske Acuras 1-2 in Saturday Morning Practice

Acura Team Penske finished 1-2 in third practice for the IMSA Road Race Showcase at Road America as the team’s No. 6 car completed a sweep of the practice times.

Dane Cameron put the No. 6 Acura ARX-05 on top of the DPi pile on Saturday morning having previously led Practice 1, while his co-driver Juan Pablo Montoya paced yesterday’s second session.

Cameron was the first driver to dip under the 1m 50s barrier this weekend with a time of 1:49.590 set early in Practice 3.

This held out until the end of the session, while a quickest second sector overall led to Helio Castroneves planting the sister No. 7 Acura in second, also with a sub-1m 50s run.

The best Penske Acura was six tenths quicker than the rest of the DPi field, with the third-best time of 1:50.259 coming courtesy of Oliver Jarvis in the No. 77 Mazda RT24-P.

Jarvis was already sat third when he improved on his final lap, having jumped ahead of Colin Braun’s 1:50.600 effort in the CORE autosport Nissan DPi.

The fastest Cadillac DPi-V.R was the No. 31 Whelen Engineering machine of Pipo Derani, who ran sixth-quickest behind the second Mazda entry.

Derani’s final time of 1:50.875 put the best of the Cadillacs 1.285 seconds off the overall pace. 

Laurens Vanthoor produced a late improvement to give Porsche its own sweep of the practice session times in the GT Le Mans class.

The Belgian driver set his fastest lap of 2:01.644 in the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR right at the end to cancel out a potential 1-2 for BMW Team RLL.

The top five cars in GTLM fell within three-tenths of a second of Vanthoor’s pace, with the two Ganassi Ford GTs running fourth and fifth ahead of the best of the Chevrolet Corvette C7.Rs.

Ben Keating led the way in GT Daytona with a time of 2:05.485 aboard the No. 33 Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3, while Paul Holton placed second in the Compass Racing McLaren 720S GT3.

Matt McMurry’s 1:51.137 effort headed up the LMP2 order for PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, meanwhile.

Next up for the WeatherTech Championship is class-by-class qualifying, which takes place at 12:35 p.m. local time (1:35 p.m. eastern).

RESULTS: Practice 3