Derani leads opening Long Beach IMSA practice

It didn't take long for Sebastien Bourdais to get comfortable on the streets of Long Beach, putting the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R at the top of the time charts after only nine laps in the first practice for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, where for much of the session he was the only driver in the 1m13s range. The team was comfortable enough that the car never emerged from the pits after a late-session red flag.

During those final minutes, however, two drivers set quicker times as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teams prepared for tomorrow's 1h40m race on the 1.968-mile, 11-turn temporary circuit. Pipo Derani was the first, keeping Cadillac on top with a 1m13.477s lap (96.42mph) in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing V-Series.R. Connor De Phillippi went quicker than Bourdais as well, nearly exactly splitting the difference between Derani and Bourdais at 1m13.503s in the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8.

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Bourdais ended up third-best, 0.028s off De Phillippi, but more than half a second ahead of Nick Tandy in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in fourth. Philipp Eng completed the top five in GTP in the No. 24 BMW.

Jack Aitken, running his first street course since he raced Formula 2 at Monaco in 2019, was running good times fairly quickly in the No. 31 Cadillac, his best a 1m14.253s. Despite the five-year gap in his street circuit experience, he expressed his excitement for the race, and his first sprint race alongside Derani.

“It’s one on the calendar that I picked out at the start of the year as quite a cool challenge," he said. "Cadillac being strong there adds to that as well. Being a shorter format race, I’m interested to see if there’s much of a change of the view of traffic and how aggressive people are. With it being a shorter race, it’s about making sure you don’t make any mistakes because time to recover from those is at a premium. I enjoy street circuits, so really looking forward to it.”

There was 1.809s gap from the top of the GTP field to the championship-leading No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06. Neither WTRAndretti car fared well in the first session, both spending times in runoffs and the No. 10 Acura moving slowly at the end of the session.

Matthew Bell put the No. 13 AWA Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R on top of the GTD runners, where the top 15 cars in the 17-car field were within a second. Bell's 1m18.911s (89.78mph) was 0.144s better than Parker Thompson in the No. 89 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. Thompson this weekend is partnered with Ben Barnicoat as the team doubles its chances in GTD to good effect so far – Jack Hawksworth was fourth in the No. 12 Lexus.

AWA led the way in a tight GTD field. Image via Lumen

Kyle Marcelli put the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 in third at 1m19.150s on his final circuit of the one-hour session. Frederik Schandorff rounded out the top five in GTD, although his co-driver Brendan Iribe later nosed the No. 70 Inception Racing McLaren 720S into the tire wall at Turn 1, bringing out the first of two red flags for the session.

The second stoppage came after Mikael Grenier made hard contact with the wall in Turn 9. That red flag lasted 11m, for a total downtime in the session of 14m – nearly a quarter of the available time.

Up Next: The 90m second practice at 3:50 p.m. ET, the final session before qualifying later this afternoon.

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