Koch Marches On In Canada

Subtitle:Series Leader Paces Practice At Canadian Tire Motorsport Park

BOWMANVILLE, Ontario (July 10, 2015) – Lites 1 series leader Kenton Koch turned the quickest overall lap in two practice sessions Friday in the Cooper Tires Prototype Lites Powered by Mazda championship at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

Koch, 21, from Glendora, California, led with a lap of 1 minute, 14.901 seconds in the No. 60 JDC Motorsports entry. His fastest trip around the 10-turn, 2.459-mile (3.957 km) circuit came during the cooler conditions of the morning session.

Qualifying is scheduled for 8:35 a.m. (ET) Saturday, July 11, with Round 7 – a 30-minute race – starting at 6:10 p.m. Round 8, a 45-minute race, is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Sunday, July 12. Koch has a 30-point lead in the Lites 1 championship over teammate Clark Toppe.

Koch and the rest of the field are preparing for track and weather conditions Saturday that could vary widely from the cooler morning air during qualifying and the afternoon heat of Round 7.

“You can kind of learn about what happens from this morning’s session from what happened this afternoon,” Koch said. “You kind of go back off of what you did in the afternoon because the car is going to have a different balance in the morning. It’s going to be interesting in qualifying tomorrow, to say the least.”

Toppe, from The Woodlands, Texas, was second overall at 1:14.975 in the No. 10 JDC Motorsports car. Robert Alon, from Encino, California, was third at 1:15.064 in the No. 00 Performance Tech Motorsports Élan DP02 chassis powered by a Mazda engine.

Matt McMurry, from Phoenix, led the warmer afternoon session with a lap of 1:15.129 in the No. 20 JDC Motorsports entry, good for fourth overall. John Falb, from Las Vegas, rounded out the top five and was the quickest Lites 1 Masters driver at 1:15.946 in the No. 77 ONE Motorsports entry.

Lites 2 championship contenders Todd Slusher and Brian Alder swapped spots atop the time sheets in both sessions.

Points leader Slusher, from Las Vegas, led the morning practice with the quickest time overall in the class, 1:17.794, in the No. 62 ONE Motorsports entry. Alder, from Dublin, Ohio, paced the hot afternoon session at 1:19.051 in the No. 22 BAR1 Motorsports car.

Live timing for all on-track sessions is available at scoring.imsa.com or on new IMSA mobile app for iOS, Android or Windows. Live text commentary from all sessions is available on Twitter @IMSALive.