K-PAX Bentley Quickest Under the Lights in Vegas

Bentley’s Maxime Soulet set the fastest lap during Thursday night practice for this weekend’s Blancpain GT World Challenge America season finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Soulet, driving the No. 3 K-PAX Racing Bentley Continental GT3, topped the charts with a time of 1:33.278 early in the 60-minute session.

The K-PAX squad initially looked set for a 1-2 result in the first-ever official GT3 practice session on the 2.51-mile Las Vegas roval, but a late improvement from Matt Campbell saw Wright Motorsports’ Pro-Am class Porsche 911 GT3 R slot into second.

Campbell edged ahead of Bentley driver Andy Soucek by six-hundredths of a second, while the Porsche factory Young Professional fell just four-hundredths short of the top spot.

Fourth-quickest was Miguel Molina in the R. Ferri Motorsport Ferrari 488 GT3, which is competing against K-PAX for the teams’ championship this weekend.

Molina, who is sharing the No. 61 Ferrari with Toni Vilander, posted a time of 1:33.531 to narrowly beat Alessandro Balzan in the 488 GT3 entered by Scuderia Corsa.

Wright Porsche driver Scott Hargrove and RealTime Racing’s Dane Cameron ended up sixth and seventh, as the top seven cars all fell within half a second of each other.

Behind them was the Martin Barkey/Kyle Marcelli driven Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 Evo, seven-tenths off the pace.

No red flags were reported during the session, which saw just over half of the 13-car field complete an average of 26 laps of the new Las Vegas course.

A second practice run is bookmarked for Friday at 11:30 a.m. PT.

RESULTS: Practice 1