By alley - May 4, 2017, 5:31 PM ET

Cadillacs continue to pace COTA IMSA practice

Jordan Taylor kept the Wayne Taylor Racing atop its competition at Circuit of The Americas on Thursday as the No. 10 Cadillac DPi-V.R eclipsed last year's Prototype class pole by a full 2.117s.

Taylor's lap of 1m56.595s, set in warm and sunny conditions, was well clear of the No. 5 Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R (+1.127s) and the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports ORECA 07-Gibson (+1.383s) WEC LMP2 which moved ahead of the sister No. 31 AXR Cadillac late in the one hour session. After the Cadillacs, the best of the Daytona Prototype internationals went to Nissan in sixth (+2.061s) and Mazda in eighth (+2.567s).

Just as Taylor's lap was an outlier among the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship's top class, young Pato O'Ward set a thoroughly ridiculous lap to lead the next best entry in the small three-car PC class by 3.124s. The Performance Tech Motorsports driver's 2m01.751s lap was only 1.5s shy from matching the slowest car in the Prototype field.

GT Le Mans featured a BMW M6 1-2 at the BMW Team RLL cars paced the class with a 2m03.703 set by Alexander Sims in the No. 25; the No. 24 BMW M6 (+0.400s) and the No. 912 Porsche GT Team 911 RSR (+0.432s) completed the top three.

The only drama during the session came after the checkered flag when the No. 3 Corvette C7.R caught fire on pit lane; the team is evaluating the degree of damage. The factory Corvette team has experienced three fires so far this year, with one coming at Daytona and another at Sebring.

The rising presence of Mercedes-AMG in GT Daytona continued as former IndyCar driver (and Sebring class polesitter) Tristan Vautier took the No. 75 Sun Energy Racing entry to P1 with a lap of 2m07.115s around the 19-turn road course. Vautier was followed by Lone Star Racing's No. 80 Mercedes-AMG GT3 (+0.400s) which is making its home state and series debut this weekend, and the No. 96 Turner motorsports BMW M6 GT3 (+0.680s) was further back.