Johnson, McCumbee Lead Final Practice

Billy Johnson and Chad McCumbee led the respective Grand Sport (GS) and Street Tuner (ST) classes in Friday morning’s final Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge practice.

Johnson turned a lap of 2:22.940 (85.630 mph) to pace the GS competitors in the No. 15 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Shelby GT350R-C co-driven by Scott Maxwell, the fastest lap of the 

weekend.“Multimatic Motorsport did a great job preparing the car, and everything seems to be perfect – knock on wood,” said Johnson, with the car badly damaged in practice for the most recent event at VIRginia International Raceway. “This morning’s weather was completely different from yesterday, and I think today’s qualifying and tomorrow’s race will be similar to Thursday’s conditions.”Championship leader Andrew Davis was second, running 2:23.082 (85.545 mph) in the No. 6 Stevenson Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro Z/28.R co-driven by Robin Liddell, followed by BJ Zacharias with a lap of 2:23.554 (85.264 mph) in the No. 14 Nismo GT Academy Nissan 370Z co-drive by Brad Jaeger.Hugh Plumb was fourth, running 2:23.617 (85.227 mph) in the No. 13 Billfish Foundation/Rum Bum Studios Porsche 911. He and his brother Matt enter the race trailing Davis and Liddell by 10 points in the standings, 251-241).McCumbee paced the ST class, running a weekend-best 2:29.416 (81.919 mph) in the No. 3 CJ Wilson Racing ModSpace Mazda MX-5. McCumbee and co-driver Stevan McAleer enter the event three points ahead of Andrew Carbonell, 212-209.“The car is really good,” said McCumbee, who scored his first career TOTAL Pole Award at Circuit of The Americas in 2013 – and went on to join McAleer in scoring  Austin-based CJ Wilson Racing’s first victory in the series. “The team has worked really hard to make the ModSpace Mazda the best it can be. We made a few adjustments to make it a little better than it was yesterday, and now we will do a few tweaks for qualifying.”Seth Thomas was second in ST, with a lap of 2:29.708 (81.759 mph) in the No. 38 Next Level European Porsche Cayman co-driven by Dan Rogers, followed by Eric Foss, 2:29.926 (81.640 mph) in the No. 56 Murillo Racing/Mosing Motorcars Porsche Cayman he shares with Jeff Mosing.Carbonell, who failed to get a timed lap in Wednesday’s opening session, was ninth fastest in the No. 26 Freedom Autosport SemperFiFund.org Mazda MX-5 co-driven by Liam Dwyer, running 2:31.349 (80.873 mph).“The car is working now, but we’re a session behind,” Carbonell said. “Now, we’ve got more work to do on the setup.”Qualifying begins today at 2:35 p.m. ET.  The two-hour, 30-minute race begins at 1:40 p.m. ET on Friday, and will be streamed live on IMSA.com and the IMSA mobile app.