On the series’ debut on the tight and twisty 1.654-mile, nine-turn temporary street circuit in downtown Detroit, Tandy beat Nick Yelloly’s BMW and Ricky Taylor’s Acura to the fastest time in the opening 90-minute session for GTP and GTD Pro cars.
Tandy consistently set the initial pace, working down to 1m08.390s on his opening stint, as teams discovered whether their simulations agreed with reality over the bumps and hard turns that are typical of American street courses.
The best of the rest early on was Gianmaria Bruni, the ex-Minardi F1 racer getting within 0.039s in the customer Proton 963, and Felipe Nasr made it a Porsche 1-2-3.
The session was then interrupted after 26 minutes for a manhole cover to be attended to on the backstretch. It resumed after a 16-minute delay.
Connor De Phillippi #25 BMW M Hybrid V8 leapt to the top of the times with a 1m08.097s. Mathieu Jaminet took over from Tandy in the #6 and improved to within a second of De Phillippi with 1m08.193s.
The fastest time was then pipped, by 0.003s, by Filipe Albuquerque’s Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06, which unleashed 1m08.053s. That was briefly beaten by Sebastien Bourdais in the Chip Ganassi-run Cadillac V-Series.R, dipping into the 1m07s bracket with 1m07.976s.
Tandy reclaimed P1 inside the final 10 minutes of the session with 1m07.811s, but Ricky Taylor (in the #10 Acura for Albuquerque) beat it with 1m07.705s. Tandy wasn’t done and responded with a sequence of 1m07.558s, 1m07.242s and 1m06.899s.
Fellow Brit Yelloly took over from De Phillippi in the #25 BMW and got within six tenths of Tandy with 1m07.479s. Taylor ended up third but was eight tenths in arrears, with the #24 BMW of Philipp Eng in fourth.
Renger van der Zande graced the Turn 1 and Turn 3 run-offs on his way to fifth in the CGR Cadillac, ahead of Bruni. Jack Aitken was seventh in the Action Express-run Caddy, ahead of Dane Cameron’s #7 Porsche, Louis Deletraz (Acura) and Tijmen van der Helm (JDC Porsche).
Corvette beats Mustang in GTD Pro muscle car clash
In GTD Pro, Dirk Muller set the early pace as Ford was clearly keen to show off its new Multimatic Mustang’s abilities on a track that’s in the shadow of General Motors’ global HQ at the Renaissance Center.
But Chevrolet struck back almost immediately, with Tommy Milner taking P1 in his #4 Corvette Z06 GT3.R and it soon became a 1-2 with Antonio Garcia joining the party in the #3 sister car.
Ferrari took the top spot after the 20-minute mark, as Albert Costa produced 1m12.540s on Conquest Racing’s debut in the all-pro class, pipping Milner by 0.057s.
Milner then paid a visit to the Turn 1 run-off before rejoining and lowering his pace to 1m12.220s, which was topped by Garcia at 1m11.815s. Milner subsequently beat that with 1m11.767s, to lead the class by 0.048s.
Following the red flag for the manhole cover repair, Costa retook the class lead with 1m10.992s before Alexander Sims took over from Garcia and produced 1m10.509s.
In for Muller, Joey Hand jumped up to second in the #65 Mustang with a 1m10.846s, over a third of a second off the pace, but just ahead of Milner and Costa.