Laurens Vanthoor pulled out a late flying lap to elevate Porsche Penske Motorsport on top in the the 64th Running of the Rolex 24 on Friday morning.
Driving the No. 6 Porsche 963, Vanthoor threw down a quick lap of 1 minute, 36.475 seconds on Daytona’s 3.56-mile speedway road course. The leading pace was 0.066s faster than Ricky Taylor, who was second in the No. 10 Cadillac V-Series.R for Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing.
BMW M Team WRT ended up third overall, courtesy of Dries Vanthoor’s flyer that was 0.315s behind in the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8. Porsche Penske Motorsport’s No. 7 machine was fourth, followed by the No’ 40 entry for Cadillac WTR in fifth.
The No. 93 Acura ARX-06 of Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/ Curb Agajanian, which starts on pole following the technical infraction to the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac following qualifying inspection, was 10th overall and 1.254s behind.
The LMP2 class was led by TDS Racing’s Charles Milesi, who delivered a class-best lap of 1 minute, 39.909 seconds in the No. 11 ORECA LMP2 07. Enzo Fittipaldi put the No. 73 Pratt Miller Motorsports machine second-fastest after a lap of 1 minute, 39.983 seconds.
The No. 75 Mercedes-AMG GT3 of 75 Express was quickest in GTD Pro after Maro Engel logged a run at 1 minute, 46.251 seconds. It was enough to best Paul Miller Racing’s No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, which was second courtesy of Max Hesse’s lap of 1 minute, 46.871 seconds.
IndyCar star Scott McLaughlin pushed DXDT Racing’s No. 36 Corvette Z06 GT3.R to the top of GTD after nailing a flyer of 1 minute, 47.155 seconds. Corvette was also represented in second, with Giacomo Altoe in DragonSpeed’s No. 81 hitting a lap of 1 minute, 47.303 seconds.
There were a number of incidents in the session.
The first involved the No. 81 DragonSpeed machine when Henrik Hedman spun and stopped in the Bus Stop roughly 10 minutes into the start of practice, which brought out the first red flag. The Bus Stop also caught out Jon Field in the No. 37 LMP2 machine for Intersport Racing, who locked up the rear tires and slid — lightly — into the tire barriers toward the infield just five minutes later to bring out another red flag.
A third red flag came out with 33 minutes remaining as the No. 62 Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO for Risi Competizione stopped off the speedway Turn 2.
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