IMSA: Shank, Negri, Ford lead first practice for TUDOR Championship at Road America

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Oswaldo Negri Jr. propelled Michael Shank Racing to the top of the times in first practice for Sunday’s Continental Tires Road Race Showcase, as Daytona Prototypes asserted their authority over Le Mans Prototype rivals.

At first the 4.048-mile Road America course seemed to favor the TUDOR Championship’s open-top cars as Olivier Pla in the OAK Racing Morgan-Nissan and then Ryan Dalziel in Extreme Speed Motorsports’ HPD ARX-03b took turns at the top. But when Ricky Taylor took his Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP around in 1min58.122sec, it took the MSR Riley-Ford Ecoboost to unseat him from P1, Negri trimming just 0.086sec to go top.

Spirit of Daytona’s Michael Valiante was third fastest, a further 0.25sec down, while Action Express Racing’s Corvette DP, winner at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course last time out, was fourth in Christian Fittipaldi’s hands.

Johannes van Overbeek was fastest of the LMPs, over 0.75 from Negri’s top time, but 0.45sec ahead of teammate Dalziel. The ESM pair were split by Pla’s Morgan.

In GT Le Mans, Marc Goossens carried on where he’d left off at Road America last year, putting the Dodge SRT Viper GTS-R No. 91 at the top with a 2min05.659sec lap, but its stablemate was at the other end of the table. The No. 93, off the back of a win at IMS, languished in the pits for most of the session having an obstinate power-steering failure rectified. Thus it was the Risi Competizione Ferrari 458 Italia of Pierre Kaffer that ran Goossens closest…and that wasn’t close at all – over eight-tenths of a second separated them.

From P2 down through P6 was close however, just a quarter second covering Kaffer’s Ferrari, Dirk Muller’s BMW Z4 GTE, Antonio Garcia’s Chevrolet Corvette C7.R, Michael Christensen’s Porsche 911 RSR and the second ’Vette of Oliver Gavin.

In PC, Jack Hawksworth’s superb form that carried him and Chris Cumming to victory at IMS two weeks ago continued unabated at Road America. The IndyCar rookie went fastest, over half a second quicker than RSR teammate Bruno Junqueira, who won at this track in the Newman/Haas Racing Champ Car in 2003.

Colin Braun (CORE autosport) and Luis Diaz (8Star Motorsports) were third and fourth.

In GTD, James Davison’s Aston Martin Vantage V12 was in a different league than its rivals, almost a full second quicker than the Porsche 911 RSRs of Jan Heylen (Snow Racing) and Andy Lally (Magnus Racing).

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