Pepper Paces Second Practice at VIR

Photo: Fabian Lagunas/SRO

Jordan Pepper led the way in Friday’s second and final practice session for this weekend’s Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS races at Virginia International Raceway.

The K-PAX Racing driver recorded a best lap of 1:44.943 in the session, outpacing the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 of Robby Foley by 0.088 seconds.

Pepper’s time was more than four-tenths slower than fellow Lamborghini driver Sandy Mitchell’s pace-setting 1:44.537 lap from the morning session that held as quickest of the day.

The No. 33 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Russell Ward and Mikael Grenier made it three different manufacturers in the top-three in the session.

Jan Heylen made a late-session improvement to go quickest in Pro-Am in his No. 20 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, ahead of the DXDT Racing Mercedes of Ryan Dalziel and Colin Braun.

Mitchell ended up with the fourth quickest time in Pro-Am in the afternoon.

Fifteen of the 16 entered cars turned laps in the session, with the No. 6 K-PAX Lamborghini still undergoing repairs from Giovanni Venturini’s accident in Practice 1.

Inception Racing, meanwhile, returned to action with a spare McLaren 720S GT3 following Brendan Iribe’s accident in testing on Thursday, completing three laps at the end of the session.

The No. 6 K-PAX Lamborghini is expected to be ready in time for qualifying, which gets underway Saturday at 8:50 a.m. ET.

RESULTS: Practice 2

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