Practice report

Long Beach IMSA: Acura edges Cadillac in final practice

Helio Castroneves put his Acura Team Penske ARX-05 at the top of the times in the second practice session for the BUBBA Burger Sports Car Grand Prix at Long Beach ahead of qualifying.

The Brazilian wheeled the #7 Acura to a best time of 1min11.918sec, just 0.019sec ahead of a late effort from former Formula 1 driver Felipe Nasr in the #31 Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R.

Jonathan Bomarito in the Mazda RT24-P was third, followed by the second AXR Caddy of Joao Barbosa, who left it late to edge Colin Braun down to fifth in the CORE autosport Nissan DPi.

Juan Pablo Montoya was 0.325sec off teammate Castroneves in sixth in the second of the Acuras, ahead of Misha Goikhberg in the Cadillac of JDC-Miller Motorsports.

In GT Le Mans, Oliver Gavin sprung the #4 Corvette C7.R to the top of the times with a 1min17.023sec, before he was demoted by the Porsche 911 RSRs of Laurens Vanthoor and Nick Tandy.

Bamber ended up with the faster time in the #912 car with a 1m16.710s, 0.234s up on Tandy.

Fourth place was the faster Ford GT of Sebastien Bourdais, who is subbing for the unwell Joey Hand in the #66 car, followed by the second Corvette and the two BMW M8 GTEs.

Practice times:

Pos.	Num	Driver	Class	Chassis	Time	Gap
1	7	Helio Castroneves Ricky Taylor	DPi	Acura DPi	1'11.918
2	31	Pipo Derani Felipe Nasr	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'11.937	0.019
3	55	Harry Tincknell Jonathan Bomarito	DPi	Mazda DPi	1'11.968	0.050
4	5	Filipe Albuquerque Joao Barbosa	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.125	0.207
5	54	Jon Bennett Colin Braun	DPi	Nissan DPi	1'12.129	0.211
6	6	Juan Pablo Montoya Dane Cameron	DPi	Acura DPi	1'12.243	0.325
7	85	Mikhail Goikhberg Tristan Vautier	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.322	0.404
8	77	Oliver Jarvis Tristan Nunez	DPi	Mazda DPi	1'12.504	0.586
9	10	Jordan Taylor Renger van der Zande	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.727	0.809
10	50	Kyle Kaiser Will Owen	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'12.806	0.888
11	84	Simon Trummer Stephen Simpson	DPi	Cadillac DPi	1'13.252	1.334
12	912	Earl Bamber Laurens Vanthoor	GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	1'16.710	4.792
13	911	Nick Tandy Patrick Pilet	GTLM	Porsche 911 RSR	1'16.944	5.026
14	4	Oliver Gavin Tommy Milner	GTLM	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	1'17.023	5.105
15	66	Sébastien Bourdais Dirk Muller	GTLM	Ford GT	1'17.322	5.404
16	3	Jan Magnussen Antonio Garcia	GTLM	Chevrolet Corvette C7.R	1'17.443	5.525
17	24	John Edwards Jesse Krohn	GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	1'17.570	5.652
18	25	Connor de Phillippi Tom Blomqvist	GTLM	BMW M8 GTE	1'17.704	5.786
19	67	Ryan Briscoe Richard Westbrook	GTLM	Ford GT	1'17.816	5.898