Laguna Seca IMSA: Cadillac and Ford back on top in FP3
The conditions were cool and unrepresentative of what teams expect to encounter in qualifying, but in Saturday morning practice at Laguna Seca, the battle for top honors remained Cadillac vs. Nissan – with Ligier as a late interloper.
#66 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT: Dirk Müller, Joey Hand
Art Fleischmann
Jordan Taylor carved the best lap of the session, a 1min18.216, on only his seventh lap of the 11-turn 2.238-mile course, and it would remain unbeaten throughout the hour-long session.
However, a late bid by Jose Gutierrez in the PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Ligier came just 0.069sec from knocking the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac off top spot, while the ESM Nissan DPi of Ryan Dalziel was just 0.009sec further behind.
Marc Goossens further proved the Ligier’s pace in these conditions with P4 in the Visit Florida Racing machine, 0.337sec from Taylor’s pace, beating the Action Express Cadillacs of Christian Fittipaldi and Dane Cameron into fifth and sixth.
Pipo Derani was seventh in the second Nissan, with Stephen Simpson eighth for JDC Miller Motorsports (Oreca).
In GT Le Mans, Dirk Muller in the #66 Ganassi-run Ford left it late to edge Toni Vilander’s Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 by less than a tenth of a second, with Alexander Sims (BMW M6) 0.3sec adrift and Jan Magnussen (Corvette C7.R) half a second away.
Richard Westbrook’s Ford and Oliver Gavin’s Corvette were fifth and sixth.
The GT Daytona class finally saw Porsche shaken out of the top five, with Bryan Sellers’ Lamborghini Huracan hitting P1 ahead of Jeff Segal’s Acura NSX, Jens Klingmann’s BMW M6, Corey Lewis in another Lamborghini and Jeroen Bleekemolen in the #33 Mercedes-AMG GT.
Qualifying begins at 11.30am local time, 2.30pm ET.
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