WTR Cadillac leads rain-affected second Road America practice

Persistent rain showers on Saturday morning led to a wet and incident-filled second practice session for the Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America.

The action kicked off quite early into the one-hour, 45-minute practice when Brendon Iribe in the No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo spun off at Turn 1 and got his car stuck in the gravel. This same fate also befell Marco Wittmann in the No. 25 BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8 with about 25 minutes to go.

At the 45-minute mark, Jack Hawksworth in the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 lost control on the exit of Turn 6, spun across the course and broadsided the concrete wall, damaging the right side of the car that had won the last two races it has run.

After that, George Kurtz spun his No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR ORECA 07-Gibson and got his rear wheels stuck in the soggy turf. These incidents combined to bring out four red flags, and all four cars will lose their fastest laps in qualifying this afternoon.

Devlin DeFrancesco in the No. 28 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3 R also had a wild spin off into the Turn 5 tire barrier, though he was able to keep the car running and return to the pits to fix some left-side damage.

Times improved throughout the session, and when the checkered flag fell, the No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R recorded the fastest time in GTP, beating the No. 24 WRT BMW. The two Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06es finished third and fourth.

Jordan Taylor took the top spot with a 2m07.647s, set with less than two minutes to go, to edge ahead of WRT’s Sheldon van der Linde.

In LMP2, TDS Racing’s No. 11 ORECA led the No. 52 of Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen and the No. 99 of AO Racing. TDS Racing’s Mathias Beche set a 2m11.846s.

A last-minute improvement propelled the two Ford Racing Mustang GT3 Evos to the top spots in GTD Pro, led by the No. 65 Ford of Christopher Mies who set a 2m21.494s, narrowly ahead of teammate Dennis Olsen in the No. 64 Ford. The No. 911 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R timed in third, ahead of the No. 59 RLL Team McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.

And in GTD, the No. 81 DragonSpeed Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R took the top spot via a 2m21.468s from Casper Stevenson – the No. 912 Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche and the No. 21 AF Corse USA Ferrari completed the top three.

Qualifying starts at 3:25pm local time.

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