Dane Cameron took the No. 6 Acura Team Penske ARX-05 DPi to the top of the timing screens in Friday’s first practice session at Watkins Glen for Sunday’s Sahlens 6 Hours of the Glen, Round 6 of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the penultimate round of the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup.
Cameron’s best time of 1m33.562s put the Acura nine-tenths clear of the second-fastest effort in the hour-long session, that from Jordan Taylor (1m34.476s) in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R.
Cameron’s time was almost a full second faster than the pole position time set at the same meeting in 2017.
Third fastest in the session was Romain Dumas, the ex-WEC and Le Mans champion fresh from his record-breaking run at Pikes Peak last weekend. Proving his credentials as one of the multi-disciplinary greats of the sport, he scored a 1m34.490s on the last lap of the session in the No. 54 Core autosport ORECA 07 Gibson, the fastest of the LMP2 spec runners — this after the car, then in the hands of teammate Colin Braun, brought out one of two red-flag interruptions after a brush with the armco left the team needing to replace the rear wing assembly.
Also in trouble during the session was the No. 77 Mazda Team Joest RT-24P DPi, with Oliver Jarvis stopping out on course to bring out the second red flag.
In the GT classes the Ford GTs dominated the session; the No.67 car topped the session with Richard Westbrook setting a 1m43.214s to beat out the final lap effort of Dirk Muller in the sister No. 66 car by two-tenths of a second.
The No. 911 Porsche 911 RSR of Nick Tandy was a further tenth of a second back, edging out the Corvette Racing pair, the top five separated by less than half a second.
GT Daytona saw Jack Hawksworth top the times in the No. 15 3GT Racing Lexus RC F GT3 with a 1m45.443s, good enough to see off the efforts from the No. 63 (Scuderia Corsa/ Weathertech) and No. 51 (Spirit of Race) Ferrari 488 GT3s with the second Lexus fourth fastest.
UP NEXT: The second 60-minute free practice session begins at 2:50 pm ET.
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