Dyson Racing, Level 5 fastest in Road Atlanta Sunday testing

First day of running for 2012 ALMS finale

Dyson Racing ended up quickest on the first day of testing for the 15th annual Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda on Sunday with the No. 20 Lola-Mazda turning a lap of 1:12.742 (125.742 mph). The car – which will be driven by Tony Burgess, Mark Patterson and Chris McMurry in Saturday’s race at Road Atlanta – led a group of four cars within 0.689 seconds of each other.

Dyson Racing’s No. 16 Lola-Mazda of Chris Dyson, Guy Smith and Steven Kane was second quickest on the day with a 1:13.148 (125.007 mph) lap in the two-hour morning session. Cars ran for five hours in the afternoon.

Level 5 Motorsports’ two Honda Performance Development ARX-03b prototypes – sat third and fourth Sunday. The No. 95 car of Marino and Dario Franchitti, and team owner Scott Tucker set a best time of 1:13.229 (124.869 mph) with the No. 055 car 0.102 seconds back.

The unclassified Nissan DeltaWing was fifth fastest at 1:14.227 (123.190 mph). Gunnar Jeannette and Lucas Ordonez are driving the car in its North American debut race. It was nearly 1.5 seconds quicker than RSR Racing’s ORECA FLM09 of Bruno Junqueira, Tomy Drissi and Ricardo Vera. The RSR entry was the lone Prototype Challenge car testing.

The GT class was, well… the GT class. The top six cars were within 0.761 seconds, led by Flying Lizard Motorsports’ No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR of Patrick Long, Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Pilet. Their Porsche turned a lap of 1:19.812 (114.569 mph) for a 0.134-second advantage back to Corvette Racing’s No. 4 Corvette C6.R of Oliver Gavin, Tommy Milner and Richard Westbrook.

The second Flying Lizard Porsche was third at 1:20.002 (114.297 mph). Seth Neiman, Marco Holzer and Nick Tandy will drive the car in the race.

TRG’s No. 66 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup of Spencer Pumpelly, Emilio Di Guida and Nelson Canache was the fastest GT Challenge car at 1:24.618 (108.062 mph). It was a scant 0.042 seconds faster than the No. 34 Green Hornet Porsche of Peter LeSaffre, Damien Faulkner and Brian Wong.

Source: ALMS