Taylor Paces Opening Practice at Laguna Seca

Photo: Rick Dole/IMSA

Ricky Taylor laid down the quickest time in the opening IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship practice session for Sunday’s Hyundai Monterey Sports Car Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

The Wayne Taylor Racing driver reeled off a quick lap of 1:14.400 in the No. 10 Acura ARX-05 to edge out the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura of Oliver Jarvis by 0.681 seconds.

Tristan Vautier put the No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac DPi-V.R third on the time sheets followed by the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac of Pipo Derani in fourth.

The Long Beach-winning No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac, which slotted fifth in the session, suffered an incident in the hands of Renger van der Zande in Turn 5 to bring out the session’s only red flag.

The car, which sustained left-rear bodywork damage, returned to action following the resumption of racing with less than 30 minutes on the clock to set the car’s quickest lap.

Championship leaders Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn brought up the rear of the six-car DPi field in their No. 02 CGR Cadillac.

LMP2 was led by the No. 8 Tower Motorsport Oreca 07 Gibson of Louis Deletraz, who outpaced Juan Pablo Montoya and Ryan Dalziel for DragonSpeed and Era Motorsport, respectively.

A late flyer by Jack Hawksworth put Vasser Sullivan atop the time sheets in GTD Pro, with the Englishman reeling off a 1:23.961 in the No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3 he shares with Ben Barnicoat.

Hawksworth’s time beat Dani Juncadella’s 1:24.171 in the WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, which was quickest in class for the majority of the 90-minute session.

Robby Foley paced GTD, meanwhile, in the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3, thanks to a 1:24.235 that put the car third overall amongst the GT3-based runners.

The No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R of Jan Heylen was second quickest in GTD, followed by Aaron Teltiz’s No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus in third.

Mathieu Jaminet put the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche third quickest in GTD Pro, meanwhile.

Practice 2 is scheduled to get underway Saturday at 8:55 a.m. PT (11:55 a.m. ET).

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