IMSA: Chevys rising in second practice at Watkins Glen

With a 1min39.542sec lap in second practice for the Sahlen's Six Hours of The Glen, Christian Fittipaldi simultaneously struck a blow for Chevrolet, the Daytona Prototypes and the defending race winning team.

Fittipaldi's Action Express Racing entry, which has won this prestigious event for the past two years, eclipsed Spirit of Daytona team's similar Corvette DP by a quarter second to move to the head of the timing monitors at the end of a session which saw the top nine in the Prototype class covered by well under one second. Behind the two Corvettes, Memo Rojas's best effort left Chip Ganassi Racing's Riley-Ford EcoBoost third after briefly leading the times.

In fourth was Ho-Pin Tung in the first of the P2 cars, OAK Racing's Nissan-Morgan having the edge over yesterday's pace setter, Extreme Speed Motorsports' HPD ARX-03B driven by Ryan Dalziel which this morning ended up seventh overall.

There was a Bowtie on top of the GTLM category too, as Antonio Garcia set a 1min44.773sec lap to put the No. 3 Corvette Racing entry (ABOVE) around one-tenth of a second quicker than Bill Auberlen's BMW Z4. But the overall picture suggests this afternoon's battle for GTLM pole and, more importantly, tomorrow's battle for the win, is going to be ferocious. Behind this pair, the Dodge SRT Viper of Jonathan Bomarito, the Porsche 911s driven by Michael Christensen and Nick Tandy, and the second Viper, Z4 and Corvette all look like contenders on pure pace alone. It should be thrilling.

It almost goes without saying that the PC battle will be similarly fraught, although this morning Renger van der Zande had a handy 0.3sec margin over his teammate John Martin in the Starworks ORECA. The pair of them pushed yesterday's PC leader, the 8Star Motorsports entry of Sean Rayhall/Tom Kimber-Smith/Eric Lux into third.

The GTD class also saw yesterday's fastest car beaten, as Leh Keen's Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT America had to cede P1 to the TRG-AMR Aston Martin V12 Vantage, driven by James Davison.

There will be a further hour of practice this afternoon at 2.45 p.m. ET before qualifying gets underway class by class at 3.55 p.m., 15 minutes for each class.

Tomorrow's race will be broadcast live on FOXSports1 from 11 a.m. ET.