Acura completes two-day ARX-05 test at Road Atlanta

Acura Team Penske completed two days of running with its new ARX-05 Daytona Prototype international at Road Atlanta earlier this week, which marked the second outing for the car after its initial shakedown in France at the Paul Ricard circuit.

According to Honda Performance Development's Matthew Niles, the only thing that slowed the test was planetary intervention.

"Overall, it was a good test," said HPD's senior engineer and project leader. "We were close to the area of total solar eclipse [on Monday], so we had to stop running for a bit as the sun was dimmed. We went on to complete all of our run plan, and feel we have a good base to build on going forward."

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Penske's Juan Pablo Montoya handled the driving duties in the twin-turbo V6-powered prototype that's based on ORECA's 07 LMP2 chassis. Additional tests will be carried out at other tracks visited by IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series in the near future, and once Montoya's teammate Dane Cameron is finished with his contract at Action Express Racing, the duo will share in the testing duties.

Team Penske's first race as a prototype entrant in IMSA will come the week of Oct. 4-7 at Road Atlanta where it will compete using a stock ORECA 07-Gibson LMP2 chassis. The participation at Petit Le Mans will come nearly a decade after its last North American sports car appearance, where it fielded a Crawford-Porsche Daytona Prototype on Oct. 10, 2009, in the Grand-Am Rolex Series season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.