IMSA: Shank sweeps Thursday practice sessions

The opening day of practice for IMSA's season finale saw Michael Shank Racing dominate three sessions and a combined 4.5 hours of running with the No. 60 Ligier JS P2-Honda. The closing 90-minute night practice was a continuation of the previous sessions where P2s were notably faster than the Daytona Prototypes, and once it was over, the gap between Olivier Pla in the MSR Ligier-Honda (1m13.541s) and the rest of the top three was rather healthy.

Jonathan Bomarito paced the first hour of the session in his No. 55 Mazda Prototype, but ended up well behind the Frenchman (-0.496s) and Joao Barbosa was further adrift in his No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP (-0.674s).

"I'm very happy with the performance today," Pla said. "I love this track, Road Atlanta, and the car has been great from the beginning. We just kept improving the car during each session. All of the changes we made were very positive so thank you to the team for that. I think it's looking good for the race."

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Former IndyCar driver Stefano Coletti was the surprise leader in PC with the No. 7 Starworks Motorsport entry (1m16.580s). The Monegasque driver led championship contenders Tom Kimber-Smith in the no. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports car (-0.698s) and Starworks teammate Renger van der Zande in the No. 8 (-0.782s).

Ford Chip Ganassi Racing's Dirk Mueller was fastest in GT Le Mans in the No. 66 Ford GT (1m18.240s) ahead of Alessandro Pier Guidi in the No. 68 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari F488 GTE (-0.061s) and teammate Richard Westbrook in the no. 67 Ford GT (-0.172s).

Marco Seefried gave Magnus Racing something positive in GT Daytona with the best lap of the night in the No. 44 Audi R8 LMS GT3 (1m21.187s). The German was shadowed by Lawson Aschenbach's No. 9 Stevenson Motorsports Audi R8 LMS GT3 (-0.085s) and the No. 23 Alex Job Racing/Team Seattle Porsche 911 GT3 R piloted by Alex Riberas (0.165s).

UP NEXT: Practice 4, 10:15 a.m. ET