Acura Duo Paces Opening Brickyard IMSA Practice

INDIANAPOLIS – The opening 90-minute practice session for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was hot and hectic Friday.

The 53 cars spread across four IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship classes fought for clear track under sunny skies on the 2.439-mile stadium road course that winds through the infield of the iconic IMS oval.

A comparatively short circuit and the 50-plus car entry for the fourth of five rounds of the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup schedule will create the most congested track conditions of the entire WeatherTech Championship season during Sunday’s six-hour race.

Finding a clear lap to establish a baseline for qualifying was the practice objective for many competitors.

In the Grand Touring Prototype class, Nick Yelloly set an early benchmark with a lap timed at one minute, 16.477 seconds (114.810 mph) in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06 after less than 15 minutes.

That time held up for more than an hour, until his Acura MSR teammate Tom Blomqvist in the No. 60 car ran a 1:16.209 (115.214 mph) late in the session.

Half of the twelve GTP competitors were within half a second of Blomqvist’s time, with the full dozen clustered within .828 of a second.

“The length of the race and traffic management will be key for us,” said Blomqvist’s co-driver Colin Braun. “We had a chance to do some testing at IMS, and this group continues to jell.”

“From the run we’ve been on recently, there’s no reason we can’t fight at the front again,” Yelloly added.

That duo will share the No. 93 Acura with Renger van der Zande and Kaku Ohta.

The championship-leading Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963s ended 10th and 11th on the speed chart, while their closest competitors in the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 caused a red flag when Philipp Eng spun into the gravel at turn four.

Eng’s teammate Dries Vanthoor set the seventh best time.

Romain Grosjean was eighth fastest in the updated No. 63 Automobili Lamborghini Squadra Corse Lamborghini SC63, which features a new rear suspension.

“I think we’re going in the right direction, so that’s good,” said Grosjean, who logged the Lamborghini’s first laps in the lead during the wet portion of last year’s Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis. “Indy is a very smooth track, so it’s not where you’re going to feel the most. But we did some testing at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, and that was good.”

Mikkel Jensen was the fastest Le Mans Prototype 2 competitor Friday with a time just 1.2 seconds off Blomqvist’s fastest overall lap. Jensen clocked 1:17.407 (113.431 mph) in the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA LMP2 07, to barely end ahead of a 1:17.414 (113.421 mph) effort posted by Nicklas Nielsen in the No. 88 ORECA LMP2 07 fielded by AF Corse.

Class point leaders P.J. Hyett and Dane Cameron (joined at Indianapolis by Jonny Edgar in the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA LMP2 07) were 10th out of 12 LMP2 runners.

In the production-based GT categories, Valentin Hasse-Clot emerged fastest in van der Steur Racing’s No. 19 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo with a lap of 1:24.403 (104.029 mph).

Hasse-Clot shares the returning VDS Aston Martin with Anthony McIntosh and series debutante Eduardo “Dudu” Barrichello, son of 11-time Formula One Grand Prix winner and four-time Rolex 24 at Daytona starter Rubens Barrichello.

That Grand Touring Daytona entry topped Davide Rigon in the No. 81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3 (1:24.419/104.009 mph). Rigon’s co-driver Albert Costa is engaged in a championship battle in the GTD PRO class with the No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports entry.

The No. 4 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R caused one of the three red flags during the 90-minute session when the car stopped on track when driver Nicky Catsburg reported an oil leak. The entry managed only 14 laps in a session where most cars ran 40 laps or more.

“I think it was an oil line that failed, and it should be a pretty easy fix, but sounds like there was going to be a lot of clean up,” reported Catsburg’s co-driver Tommy Milner. “The important thing is the engine seems to be okay.”

“Traffic and weather are the two big talking points – we already saw that in the first session,” Milner added. “It looks like we’ll have some rain on race day, and the traffic is definitely a big challenge here, for certain. There’s not a whole lot we can do other than be aware of where the sticky points are, so to speak.”

WeatherTech Championship competitors will have another 90 minutes of track time for practice Saturday morning.

Qualifying will be streamed from 3:10-4:45 p.m., airing domestically in the United States on Peacock and via IMSA.TV and the official IMSA YouTube channel internationally.